The use of infrared thermography at high frame rates

Composite materials are finding increased use in applications where impact and high strain rate loading form a significant part of a component’s service loads. It is therefore imperative to fully characterise the thermomechanical response of composite materials at high strain rates. The work described in the paper forms part of a project investigating the thermomechanical response of composite materials at high strain rates. To obtain the temperature evolutions during the high strain rate event (thermoelastic, viscoelastic and fracture energy), full-field infrared thermography is used. In contrast to visible light photography, the measurand in thermography is the intensity of the emitted radiation from the specimen surface, as opposed to reflected radiation. At increasing recording rates, the emittance available for measurement reduces proportional to the exposure time; the faster the data capture the less the exposure time. Hence, signal noise and detector calibration present a major challenge. This is accompanied by challenges arising from controlling an infrared detector that has not been optimised for the purpose of high speed data acquisition. The present paper investigates the possibility of applying infra-red thermography to high strain rate events and discusses the challenges in obtaining reliable values of the temperature changes that occur over very short time scales during high strain rate events.