A Taguchi Design of Experiment Approach to Pulse and Lock in Thermography, Applied to CFRP Composites

The current text presents a parametric study of two active thermography routines namely, Pulse and Lock-in as applied to carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) composites; using a Taguchi design of experiment approach. A set of controllable factors are highlighted and selected for each technique at different levels. Three factors have been identified for the pulse thermography (specifically; defect aspect ratio, pulse period, and experimental duration), and two factors for the Lock-in mode (that is lock in frequency and period); each factor can be manipulated at three different levels. The analysis reveals the effectiveness of the Taguchi design of experiment in consolidating the number of factorial experiments, and in quantifying the results and the associated sensitivity for each factor (its dominance), using a signal to noise ratio criterion. The analysis of variance and analysis of means show that the aspect ratio is not a controlling parameter for the pulse thermography, with the pulse time being the most dominant. Moreover, it decides on the optimal settings for each testing mode. These settings are further validated using additional CFRP artificial sample with eight and six layers of laminates.