Investigation of delamination in carbon fiber reinforced plastic by means of pulse thermography, shearography and active thermography

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer is a material widely used nowadays in different application areas. All sectors, especially the aeronautics industry, demand components of high mechanical performance, but also with high durability and reliability, hence the need for advanced health assessing methods and to monitor the integrity of the components throughout their lifecycle. In this work the focus lies on the non-destructive detection of barely visible impact damage. Even though such damage is often not visible from the surface, it does go along with deeper delaminations and core damage, thus representing a serious peril. In this work, in order to observe such defects, three established techniques have been used: pulse thermography, shearography and vibrothermography. These three methods provide a full field detection scheme and exploit different physical phenomena to detect the defect. By combining the insight gained from the three different detection methods, we aim to better understand the nature of the defect and to highlight the potential and limitations of each technique.