PULSE PHASE THERMOGRAPHY ANALYSIS ON CYLINDRICAL GEOMETRY

Goal of this work is the characterization of flaws in cylindrical geometry exploiting Pulse Phase Thermography (PPT), a Non-Destructive Testing method belonging to the Infrared Thermography category. The experiments are conducted on a hollow semicylindrical Plexiglas pipe section, with an outer and an inner diameter, respectively, of 150 mm and 130 mm. Defects are simulated by 5 cylindrical dummy holes, whose diameter range between 2 and 8 mm. Two operations are necessary to reconstruct the actual conditions of the analyzed specimen: morphological operations are carried on to reconstruct its actual surface, due to the distortion of the acquired image; furthermore, an evaluation how the directional emissivity affects the measurements is conducted. A FEM model has also been implemented to extend the analysis on other type of defects.