Ultraschallangeregte Thermografie zur Risserkennung im Stahlbau - Ein Verfahren auf dem Prüfstand

Ultrasound excited thermography applied to constructional steelwork — An emerging crack detection methodology.

Ultrasound excited thermography is an innovative method for the detection of crack-like flaws in metal components. When crack faces rub and clap against each other due to vibrational excitation the dissipated energy leads to a local heating of the crack. This way the defect can be detected by means of an infrared camera. Despite of being a research topic in the field of nondestructive testing for several years, the technique has not been transferred to civil engineering, yet. This article presents the NDT method and discusses the essential characteristics and problems which are of concern when testing steel members. The influences of the excitation frequency and the prestressing conditions on the crack detectability as well as possible damaging effects due to repeated insonification are investigated. Since the physical effects involved in the energy dissipation at the crack region are not understood in detail, a simplified numerical simulation approach is presented that leads to good agreement of experimental and numerical results.