Application of thermographic fields in identification of structural properties and defects

The detection of defects as well as their location, orientation and size is performed using measurements of surface temperature either at some selected points or on selected surface areas or lines. The response temperature of a structure is caused by statically, quasi-statically or dynamically applied thermal load on some structural boundary parts or within its domain. On the basis of results of measurements, an inverse heat transfer problem is formulated for a model structure and next solved. The inverse solution is constructed by minimizing the properly defined distance norm of measured and model temperatures. The model temperature distribution is calculated using the finite element model of a structure, while in minimizing the distance norm functional the gradient-oriented methods are used. The proper sensitivities of introduced identification functional are also derived. Some simple examples illustrate the applicability of the proposed approach. Keywords: identification, sensitivity, thermographic methods, path-independent integrals