A Numerical Study on Interlaminar Defects Characterization in Fibre Metal Laminates with Flying Laser Spot Thermography

This work describes a numerical study on non-destructive evaluation of interlayer disbond defects in aerospace grade Fibre Metal Laminate sheets (FMLs). A recently proposed infrared non-destructive testing setup is considered, where a continuous laser is moved over the material surface, while the thermal footprint of the moving heat source is acquired, e.g. by an infrared thermal camera. Interlayer disbonds are then detected by analysing the features of the acquired thermograms. The experimental feasibility of this approach has been recently proved. The present work proposes a numerical simulation of the NDT approach, where the material thermal response is analysed and correlated to defects signatures. The numerical study has in particular investigated the influence of a number of different features on the defect detectability, and on the accuracy of defect edges and position identification. Such features comprise different FML materials (GLARE, CARAL, Ti-Gr), laser heat deposition and regions of data analyses.