NDT&E using shearography with impulsive thermal stressing and clustering phase extraction

Shearography has been widely adopted for nondestructive testing and evaluation of various materials, especially in the rubber industry and aerospace industry. It detects flaws and defects by identifying deformation anomalies when the specimen is stressed by a certain means. Conventional stressing methods for shearography include pressurization, mechanical or acoustic loading and vibration excitation. These stressing techniques are favorably applied in various applications. In this study, we propose a novel impulsive thermal stressing method using high-power flash lamps for convenient nondestructive testing and evaluation in both laboratory and industrial environment. The proposed technique employs a high-energy heat flux to excite the specimen and detects the thermal deformation anomaly using a shearographic setup. By incorporating a novel clustering phase extraction method, the movement of the continuously deforming object is obtained using only one single deformed speckle image at each deformed stage, thus enabling both qualitative and quantitative measurement. Experiments conducted on various samples with cracks and debonds demonstrate the practicability of proposed technique for both laboratory and industrial applications. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.