Vertical Cracks Excited in Lock-in Vibrothermography Experiments: Identification of Open and Inhomogeneous Heat Fluxes.

Lock-in vibrothermography has proven to be very useful to characterizing kissing cracks producing ideal, homogeneous, and compact heat sources. Here, we approach real situations by addressing the characterization of non-compact (strip-shaped) heat sources produced by open cracks and inhomogeneous fluxes. We propose combining lock-in vibrothermography data at several modulation frequencies in order to gather penetration and precision data.

Characterization of rectangular vertical cracks using burst vibrothermography.

We use burst vibrothermography to characterize, i.e., to determine the dimensions and location of buried vertical cracks of rectangular shape.