GAO et al.: UNSUPERVISED SPARSE PATTERN DIAGNOSTIC OF DEFECTS 373
Fig. 1. ECPT system.
where T = T (x, y, z, t) is the temperature distribution, k is the
thermal conductivity of the material (W/m · K), which is depen-
dent on temperature. ρ is the density (kg/m
3
), C
p
is specific
heat (J/kg · K). q(x, y, z, t) is the internal heat generation func-
tion per unit volume, which is the result of the EC excitation.
The variation of temporal temperature depends on the spatial
temperature variation for heat conduction. According to (2),
heat conduction is influenced by T (x, y, z, t), ξ, υ, σ, μ, and
l, where ξ denotes the sensor geometry factor; υ denotes the
parameters of the excitation (frequency and amplitude) and l
denotes the lift off (distance between the sensor and sample).
From the above analysis, it becomes clear that the variation of
temperature spatially and its transient response recorded from
the IR camera directly reveals the intrinsic properties variation
of the conductive material.
2) IT Defect Detection: Fig. 1 shows the diagram of IT
defect detection system. The excitation signal generated by
the excitation module is a small period of high-frequency cur-
rent. The current in the coil will induce the ECs and generate
the resistive heat in the conductive material. The heat will
diffuse in time until the heat reaches equilibrium in the mate-
rial. If a defect (e.g., crack and fatigue region) is present in
the conductive material, EC distribution as well as heat diffu-
sion process will vary. Consequently, the spatial distribution of
temperature on the surface of material and the temperature tran-
sient response will show the variation, which is captured by an
infrared camera. It can be divided into two phases: 1) heating
phase; and 2) cooling phase. As an example, we take a finite
length sample with small penetrated slot as a defect testing sam-
ple. The resultant heating frame from IT (0.1 s) is presented in
Fig. 1 right bottom panel. In the heating phase, different heat
generation rates enlarge the t emperature spatial variation. Hot
spots are observed around the slot tips and the cool areas locate
at both sides of the slot. In the cooling phase, heat diffuses from
high-temperature area to low-temperature area, and reduces the
contrast. In addition, the area located far away from excitation
coil will continually rise temperature because of its heat dif-
fusion. These different areas can be considered as the pattern
regions which share the similar transient responses in the sam-
ple. The infrared camera functioned as a temperature spatial
image signal recorder along with time flowing. In addition, the
camera actually records the mixed image signal correspond-
ing to the signal image from the thermal pattern regions at
each time point. These regions are termed as thermal patterns
in IT.
The hot spots are used specially for defect location and siz-
ing. Fig. 1 shows the example of temperature distribution at the
sample surface as the lift-off distance is set d =4mm. When
the inductor is close to the tip of the defect (d =4mm), it is
seen that significant EC flows around the tip of the defect and
the defect behaves predominantly as a slot.
3) Relationship Between Excitation System, Heating
Phase, and Cooling Phase With Respect to Material
Variation: IT uses inductive heater as the excitation system.
Hence, it is specific for conductive materials or multilayer sys-
tem with conductive layer. The inductive heat depends on the
parameters of material and excitation signal.
1) To optimize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the heat
power should be maximized. Normally, the high-current
amplitude (hundreds of ampere) and great frequency
(>100 kHz) are used.
2) The longer heating time results in the accumulation of
large amount of heat Q. For detecting surface defects, the
long heating time is useful for good SNR and contrast
[18]. At the same time, the longer heating time is useful
for detecting the deep defects due to heat conduction from
surface to deep defects [51].
3) The long cooling time is useful for heat conduction to
detect deep defects. The thermal penetration depth for a
pulsed excitation is determined by the thermal diffusivity
α
of the material and by the observation time t (cooling
time) after pulse heating.
4) The small electrical conductivity can lead to a high heat
power and great EC penetration depth. The thermal diffu-
sivity depends on thermal conductivity, mass density and
specific heat. If the thermal diffusivity is large, the tem-
perature changes quickly. Hence the sampling frequency
of the camera must be high enough to capture the changes
of temperature.
4) Detectability: In general, the ECPT is valid for both
deep and shallow defects, which is based on the physics
principles of inductive heating, heat conduction, and infrared
radiation. According to skin effect in inductive heating, the
EC has a penetration depth δ, which is expressed by equation
δ =
1
√
fπμσ
, where f is the frequency of the pulsed excitation.
If the shallow defects are in this skin area, they will dis-
turb the EC distribution and then the temperature distribution.
Theoretically, the lower excitation frequency has deeper detec-
tion depth. In practice, in order to improve the heating efficient
with IT, the frequency is about 100 kHz and the skin depth is
relative small. For example, ferromagnetic metals have a much
smaller skin depth (about 0.04 mm at 100 kHz). Therefore,
shallow/surface defects can be detected. The heat will con-
duct to the interior and lateral area of the material. If the deep
defects disturb the heat conduction process, the surface temper-
ature distribution will be different from the surrounding area.
The heat conduction is used to detect the deep defects [51].
The temperature will be captured by IR camera. If the surface
defects show a different emissivity value, the temperature will
be different from the surrounding area.
5) IT Multiphase Analysis: According to (2), the first-
order derivative of the temperature response of transient
response, as shown in Fig. 2(b), is composed of heat diffu-
sion and Joule heating [52]. In Fig. 2(c), we can infer from the
thermal video that the heat conduction procedure can be divided
into six phases.