Monitoring of jute/hemp fiber hybrid laminates by nondestructive testing techniques

Damage following static indentation of jute/hemp (50 wt.% total fiber content) hybrid laminates was detected by a number of nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques, in particular, near (NIR) and short-wave (SWIR) infrared reflectography and transmittography, infrared thermography (IRT), digital speckle photography (DSP), and holographic interferometry (HI), to discover and evaluate real defects in a laminate with a complex structure. A comparative study between thermographic data acquired in the mid- (MWIR) and long-wave infrared (LWIR) spectrum bands, by pulsed (PT) and square pulse (SPT) thermography, is reported and analyzed. A thermal simulation by COMSOL Multiphysics (COMSOL Inc., Burlington, MA, USA) to validate the heating provided is also added. The robust SOBI (SOBI-RO) algorithm, available into the ICALAB Toolbox (BSI RIKEN ABSP Lab, Hirosawa, Japan) and operating in the MATLAB® (The MathWorks, Inc., Natick, MA, USA) environment, was applied on SPT data with results comparable to the ones acquired by several thermographic techniques. Finally, segmentation operators were applied both to the NIR/SWIR transmittography images and to a characteristic principal component thermography (PCT) image (EOF ) to visualize damage in the area surrounding indentation.