Applications of thermal imaging to aerospace structures

摘要

The procedures developed for the inspection of three composite aerospace structures are outlined in this paper. Thermographic inspections are discussed for a monolithic graphite/phenolic nose cone, monolithic graphite/polyimide LO sub 2 feedline fairing and an aluminum honeycomb core graphite/epoxy inter tank structure. All of the inspections were performed with a scanning thermal imager and thermal excitation was produced by way of a hand held quartz lamp ina through transmission heating mode. Each inspection was validated through the concurrent inspection of a calibration standard structure built in the same fashion as the flight qualification article except with programmed flaws. The results from this work demonstrates the usefulness of infrared thermographic nondestructive evaluation for identifying delamination, porosity and disbond type defects in advanced composite aerospace structures.