Robotic Eddy Current Thermography: Simulations and experiments

Abstract

Eddy current thermography (ECT) is an active thermography method. The inductive excitation generates Eddy currents in an electrically-conductive specimen. In presence of defects, the eddy current flow is affected by these discontinuities leading to changes in the temperature distribution in the specimen around the defects. These changes are observed by an infrared camera. In this paper, we present a robotic application of the method. Simulations are performed using COMSOL Multiphysics by varying different parameters. Experiment is realised on an aluminum plate with cracks of different sizes created artificially in our laboratory. The resulting images are reconstructed with a dedicated algorithm.