Laser Multi-mode Scanning Thermography Method for Fast Inspection of Micro-cracks in TBCs Surface

Conventional non-destructive testing methods are difficult to be applied in defect detection of thermal barrier coating (TBCs) because of some of its characteristics, such as porosity and thin thickness, etc. For detecting surface cracks in TBCs, a laser multi-modes scanning thermography (SMLT) method has been developed in this paper, combining fast scan mode using linear laser with fine scan mode using point laser on the tested specimen surface. Linear scanning has a large detection range and detection speed, and point scanning has a higher sensitivity. Through the theoretical analysis, numerical simulation and experimental verification, five unique thermal response features of the cracks stimulated by two scanning modes were discovered and summarized. These features in the thermal images include temperature sharply rising in local region, distinct increase of the area of high temperature zone, obvious ‘tailing’, ‘dislocation’ and thermal obstruction phenomenon, respectively. Therefore, with the corresponding post-processing algorithm developed here, the location and shape of surface cracks in TBCs can be efficiently detected by analyzing the information of these thermal response features. Validation tests showed that the surface cracks with the width of more than \(20\,\upmu \hbox {m}\) can be quickly detected in line-scan stage, while in point-scan stage, the \(9.5\,\upmu \hbox {m}\) wide surface cracks can be accurately detected.