Continuous wave terahertz inspection of glass fiber reinforced plastics with semi-automatic 3-D image processing for enhanced defect detection

Author

Friederich, F. ; Cristofani, Edison ; Matheis, Carsten ; Jonuscheit, Joachim ; Beigang, Rene ; Vandewal, Marijke

Author_Institution

Fraunhofer Inst. of Phys. Meas. Tech., Kaiserslautern, Germany

fYear

2014

fDate

1-6 June 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

The increasing industrial application of fiber reinforced plastics demands developments of new techniques for non-destructive testing. The sub-terahertz frequency band has proved to be a noteworthy option for this task. Composite structures or laminates can be inspected for foreign inclusions, delaminations, debonds, etc., using sub-terahertz sensors during the manufacturing process or maintenance. In this contribution we present our results using a frequency modulated continuous wave terahertz imaging system in comparison with conventional NDT measurements on several different GFRP samples. Thereby a semi-automatic terahertz image processing approach for enhanced defect detection is applied.

Keywords

filled polymers; flaw detection; glass fibre reinforced plastics; image processing; terahertz wave imaging; composite structures; continuous wave terahertz inspection; debonds; defect detection; delaminations; foreign inclusions; frequency modulated continuous wave terahertz imaging system; glass fiber reinforced plastics; laminates; maintenance; manufacturing process; nondestructive testing; semiautomatic terahertz 3D image processing; subterahertz sensors; Indexes; Inspection; Laminates; Optimization; FMCW; fiber reinforced plastics; image processing; non-destructive testing; terahertz imaging;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium (IMS), 2014 IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

Tampa, FL

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.2014.6848486

Filename

6848486