Quantitative determination of impact damage and other defects in carbon fiber composites by transient thermography.

A quantitative assessment has been made of the performance of the transient thermography NDE method in the evaluation of defects in carbon-epoxy composite panels. Images have been obtained of artificial defects (teflon inserts) and their sizes are compared with the modeling predictions. Images have also been obtained of impact damage defects, impact energies up to 5 joules, and these results have been compared with defect images produced by ultrasonic c-scan.