• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.317-322
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• 2013

This paper presents a new laser lock-in thermography (LLT) technique for nondestructive evaluation. LLT utilizes a modulated continuous wave laser beam as a heat source to obtain high fidelity thermal wave images even at the presence of background heat disturbances. The thermal waves propagating along the surface and through-the-thickness directions of a structure are visualized using newly developed laser lock-in amplitude and phase images, enhancing the detectability of surface and subsurface defects. The LLT technique is numerically investigated and experimentally validated using thermal images obtained from a steel specimen with low emissivity.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.361-366
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• 2013

An imaging technique to visualize the internal defects in a plate-type nuclear fuel specimen was developed by using an active optical interferometer for a nondestructive quality inspection. A periodic thermal wave having a sinusoidal intensity pattern induced a periodical strain variation for the specimen. The varying strain image was acquired using an optical laser interferometer. The strain distribution over the internal defects will be distorted in an acquired strain image because a part of the thermal wave will be reflected from these defects during propagation. In this paper, internal defects were efficiently visualized by sequentially accumulating the extracted defect components. The experimental results confirmed that the developed visualization system can be a valuable tool to detect the internal defects in plate-type nuclear fuel.