Cfrp Sandwiched Facesheets Inspected By Pulsed Thermography

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) has been always used in aerospace, Sandwiched structures composed by a honeycomb core between two multi-layer CFRP facesheets are very common on aerospace parts. As to the application of the CFRP sandwiched facesheets is extended, The demand for quality control of CFRP sandwiched composites is increasing, Infrared thermography is one of several non-destructive testing techniques which can be used for defect detection in aircraft materials such as carbon-fibre-reinforced composites. Infrared thermography can be potentially useful, as it is quick, real time, non-contact and can examine over a relatively large area in one inspection procedure. The technique is based on heating the sample surface with different heat sources and monitoring the surface temperature of the sample with an IR camera, any abnormal behavior of the surface temperature distribution indicates the subsurface defect. This kind of structure is normally affected by anomalies such as delaminations, disbonding, water ingressing to the core. in this paper, several different kinds of defects which are of various size and depth below the test surface are planted in the CFRP composites, the Teflon inserts between the plies in the facesheet represents the delaminations, the Teflon inserts between the inner facesheet and adhensive or between adhensive and core are simulated disbonding in the composites, they are all tested by pulsed thermography, meanwhile, these samples are also inspected by ultrasonic testing, compare with each characteristic and the results got by these two different methods, it shows that pulsed thermography is an effective nondestructive technique for inspecting CFRP composites.