Calibrated Pulse-Thermography Procedure for Inspecting HDPE

Abstract EN

This manuscript discusses the application of a pulse-thermography modality to evaluate the integrity of a high-density polyethylene HDPE joint for delamination, in nonintrusive manner.

The inspected HDPE structure is a twin-cup shape, molded through extrusion, and the inspection system comprises a high-intensity, short-duration radiation pulse to excite thermal emission; the text calibrates the experiment settings (pulse duration, and detector sampling rate) to accommodate HDPE bulks thermal response.

The acquired thermal scans are processed through new contrast computation named “self-referencing”, to investigate the joint tensile strength and further map its adhesion interface in real-time.

The proposed system (hardware, software combination) performance is assessed through an ultrasound C-scan validation and further benchmarked using a standard pulse phase thermography (PPT) routine.