8. Practical Application of PT/PPT

It has been shown that application of a load can enable a kissing defect to open sufficiently to enable its detection. So far the technique is laboratory based; using a test machine to impart load, and a high specification infrared detector to measure the thermal response. The current chapter focusses on the adaption of the technique to allow it to become more practical and accessible to industry. Firstly the use of a vacuum load to open experimentally simulated defects with the aim to provide a more portable means of loading is studied. Then a feasibility study is carried out showing the potential use of a lower cost bolometer for pulsed thermography (PT). At this stage only PT has been considered as the data transfer from the low cost bolometer used is not suitable for the current processing into pulse phase thermography data however, it is shown that PT is possible using a very low specification detector.