Thermal nondestructive testing technology of aircraft composite material

Compared with other materials like metal, the nondestructive testing (NDT) of composites is still a relatively immature area. The ultrasonic thermography technology as well as the pulsed thermography technology is introduced for NDT of aircraft composite materials. Two specimens of aircraft composite material with a man-made defect were tested by these two methods respectively. The detection results are compared and analyzed, and the thermal images are processed. A new quantitative assessment algorithm is proposed to measure the defect size, area as well as perimeter and the corresponding length precision is estimated.