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Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections

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A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Electronic Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2020) | Viewed by 41533

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Dr. Stefano Sfarra

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Department of Industrial and Information Engineering and Economics, University of L’Aquila, L'Aquila, Italy
Interests: building heritage; building pathology; infrared thermography; hygrothermal behaviour of buildings; energy efficiency; thermal comfort; numerical modelling; heat transfer; optical metrology; composite materials; NDT
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Dr. Eva Barreira

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Guest Editor

Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering (FEUP), University of Porto, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Interests: building technology; sustainable materials; building pathology; infrared thermography; in situ and laboratory testing; hygrothermal behavior of buildings; energy efficiency; thermal comfort; natural ventilation and airtightness
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Susana Lagüela López

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Guest Editor

Cartographic and Land Engineering Department, Higher Polytechnic School of Avila, University of Salamanca, Hornos Caleros, 50 05003 Avila, Spain
Interests: infrared thermography; laser scanning; ground-penetrating radar; 3D modeling; civil and environmental engineering; geographic information systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Non-destructive testing (NDT) describes techniques that measure properties in the body without disturbing their state. Infrared thermography is a special type of NDT that evaluates the body’s thermal state and determines the presence of thermal pathologies. It can be applied autonomously or combined with other NDT techniques that provide additional information to complete the study of a particular element, for example, to provide information about the interior of an element (higher depth). Thus, different infrared thermography (IRT) methods, alone or together with other NDT techniques, represent good alternatives for the evaluation of the state of structures and building materials that cannot be disturbed due to their “in operation” state.

This Special Issue of Sensors “Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections” invites the submission of both review and original research articles related to the application of infrared thermography and other non-destructive techniques to the inspection of buildings, infrastructures and materials for the detection, identification and characterization (geometric and thermal) of pathologies that affect the integrity of the element under study. Articles on advanced modelling realized via computer programs supporting experimental data are also welcome.

Dr. Stefano Sfarra
Dr. Eva Barreira
Dr. Susana Laguela
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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Keywords

Infrared thermography
Non-Destructive Testing
Infrastructure
Materials
Pathologies
Thermal behavior

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Published Papers (11 papers)

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Editorial

Jump to: Research

4 pages, 184 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

Special Issue on “Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections”

by Stefano Sfarra, Eva Barreira and Susana Lagüela

Sensors 2021, 21(9), 3107; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21093107 - 29 Apr 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1622

Abstract

Non-destructive testing (NDT) describes techniques that measure properties of the body without disturbing their state [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

Research

Jump to: Editorial

13 pages, 1881 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Emissivity of Building Materials for Infrared Measurements

by Eva Barreira, Ricardo M. S. F. Almeida and Maria L. Simões

Sensors 2021, 21(6), 1961; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21061961 - 11 Mar 2021

Cited by 35 | Viewed by 5625

Abstract

Infrared thermography (IRT) is a technique increasingly used in building inspection. If in many applications it is sufficient to analyze the thermal patterns, others exist in which the exact determination of the surface temperature is a fundamental aspect. In these circumstances, the emissivity of the surfaces assumes special relevance, being probably the most important property in the definition of the boundary conditions. However, information on the uncertainty involved in its measurement, as well as the conditions that influence it, is scarce. This article presents an innovative contribution both to the characterization of the emissivity of various construction materials, and to the discussion of emissivity measurement procedures and the attendant uncertainty. In this sense, three experimental campaigns were carried out: T.I, preliminary tests to assess the initial conditions required for an accurate IRT measurement of the emissivity (reference tape and position of the camera); T.II, assessment of the emissivity of nine different building materials, in dry conditions, using the emissometer and the IRT and black tape methods; and T.III, assessment of the emissivity of three materials during the drying process. The results confirmed that emissivity is a crucial parameter for the accurate measurement of surface temperature. Emissivity measurements carried out with IRT (black tape method) and with the emissometer returned meaningful differences when compared with the values available in the literature. This disagreement led to surface temperature differences of up to 7 °C (emissometer versus reference values). This research also highlighted that the moisture content of the materials influences the emissivity values, with fluctuations that can be greater than 10%, and that the effect of moisture is visible even for low values of moisture content. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

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19 pages, 13952 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Evaluation of Hygrothermal Behaviour in Heritage Buildings through Sensors, CFD Modelling and IRT

by Carlos Lerma, Júlia G. Borràs, Ángeles Mas, M. Eugenia Torner, Jose Vercher and Enrique Gil

Sensors 2021, 21(2), 566; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21020566 - 14 Jan 2021

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2688

Abstract

Architectural heritage, building materials and interior space are highly susceptible to temperature and relative humidity. A better knowledge of the hygrothermal dynamics inside buildings allows an adequate conservation of heritage. This work compares three non-destructive techniques (NDT), such as temperature and relative humidity sensors, finite element simulations (CFD) and thermographic pictures (IRT). The work has made it possible to carry out an assessment of the risk of condensation over a year and to identify affected periods and areas of the building. Sensors and IRT pictures provide real data to validate CFD simulations, facilitating a global analysis of the building. The results provided reflect a great concordance between the NDTs used. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

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18 pages, 7608 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Deep Learning Method for the Impact Damage Segmentation of Curve-Shaped CFRP Specimens Inspected by Infrared Thermography

by Ziang Wei, Henrique Fernandes, Hans-Georg Herrmann, Jose Ricardo Tarpani and Ahmad Osman

Sensors 2021, 21(2), 395; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21020395 - 8 Jan 2021

Cited by 39 | Viewed by 4015

Abstract

Advanced materials such as continuous carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastic (CFRP) laminates are commonly used in many industries, mainly because of their strength, stiffness to weight ratio, toughness, weldability, and repairability. Structural components working in harsh environments such as satellites are permanently exposed to some sort of damage during their lifetimes. To detect and characterize these damages, non-destructive testing and evaluation techniques are essential tools, especially for composite materials. In this study, artificial intelligence was applied in combination with infrared thermography to detected and segment impact damage on curved laminates that were previously submitted to a severe thermal stress cycles and subsequent ballistic impacts. Segmentation was performed on both mid-wave and long-wave infrared sequences obtained simultaneously during pulsed thermography experiments by means of a deep neural network. A deep neural network was trained for each wavelength. Both networks generated satisfactory results. The model trained with mid-wave images achieved an F1-score of 92.74% and the model trained with long-wave images achieved an F1-score of 87.39%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

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18 pages, 6794 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Enhanced Infrared Sparse Pattern Extraction and Usage for Impact Evaluation of Basalt-Carbon Hybrid Composites by Pulsed Thermography

by Jue Hu, Hai Zhang, Stefano Sfarra, Claudia Sergi, Stefano Perilli, Clemente Ibarra-Castanedo, Guiyun Tian and Xavier Maldague

Sensors 2020, 20(24), 7159; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20247159 - 14 Dec 2020

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2340

Abstract

Nowadays, infrared thermography, as a widely used non-destructive testing method, is increasingly studied for impact evaluation of composite structures. Sparse pattern extraction is attracting increasing attention as an advanced post-processing method. In this paper, an enhanced sparse pattern extraction framework is presented for thermographic sequence processing and defect detection. This framework adapts cropping operator and typical component extraction as a preprocessing step to reduce the dimensions of raw data and applies sparse pattern extraction algorithms to enhance the contrast on the defect area. Different cases are studied involving several defects in four basalt-carbon hybrid fiber-reinforced polymer composite laminates. Finally, comparative analysis with intensity distribution is carried out to verify the effectiveness of contrast enhancement using this framework. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

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38 pages, 15895 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

IRT and GPR Techniques for Moisture Detection and Characterisation in Buildings

by Iván Garrido, Mercedes Solla, Susana Lagüela and Norberto Fernández

Sensors 2020, 20(22), 6421; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20226421 - 10 Nov 2020

Cited by 35 | Viewed by 4922

Abstract

The integrity, comfort, and energy demand of a building can be negatively affected by the presence of moisture in its walls. Therefore, it is essential to identify and characterise this building pathology with the most appropriate technologies to perform the required prevention and maintenance tasks. This paper proposes the joint application of InfraRed Thermography (IRT) and Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) for the detection and classification of moisture in interior walls of a building according to its severity level. The IRT method is based on the study of the temperature distribution of the thermal images acquired without an application of artificial thermal excitation for the detection of superficial moisture (less than 15 mm deep in plaster with passive IRT). Additionally, in order to characterise the level of moisture severity, the Evaporative Thermal Index (ETI) was obtained for each of the moisture areas. As for GPR, with measuring capacity from 10 mm up to 30 cm depth with a 2300 MHz antenna, several algorithms were developed based on the amplitude and spectrum of the received signals for the detection and classification of moisture through the inner layers of the wall. In this work, the complementarity of both methods has proven to be an effective approach to investigate both superficial and internal moisture and their severity. Specifically, IRT allowed estimating superficial water movement, whereas GPR allowed detecting points of internal water accumulation. Thus, through the combination of both techniques, it was possible to provide an interpretation of the water displacement from the exterior surface to the interior surface of the wall, and to give a relative depth of water inside the wall. Therefore, it was concluded that more information and greater reliability can be gained by using complementary IRT-GPR, showing the benefits of combining both techniques in the building sector. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

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20 pages, 4368 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Development of Thermal Principles for the Automation of the Thermographic Monitoring of Cultural Heritage

by Iván Garrido, Susana Lagüela, Stefano Sfarra and Pedro Arias

Sensors 2020, 20(12), 3392; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20123392 - 16 Jun 2020

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3013

Abstract

The continuous deterioration of elements, with high patrimonial value over time, can only be mitigated or annulled through the application of techniques that facilitate the preventative detection of the possible agents of deterioration. InfraRed Thermography (IRT) is one of the most used techniques for this task. However, there are few IRT methodologies, which can automatically monitor the cultural heritage field, and are vitally important in eliminating the subjectivity in interpreting and accelerating the analysis process. In this work, a study is performed on a tessellatum layer of a mosaic to automatically: (i) Detect the first appearance of the thermal footprint of internal water, (ii) delimit the contours of the thermal footprint of internal water from its first appearance, and (iii) classify between harmful and non-harmful internal water. The study is based on the analysis of the temperature distribution of each thermal image. Five thermal images sequences are acquired during the simulation of different real situations, obtaining a set of promising results for the optimization of the thermographic inspection process, while discussing the following recommended steps to be taken in the study for future researches. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

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14 pages, 6903 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Quantitative Infrared Thermography to Evaluate the Humidification of Lightweight Concrete

by Eva Barreira, Ricardo M.S.F. Almeida, Maria L. Simões and Daniela Rebelo

Sensors 2020, 20(6), 1664; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20061664 - 17 Mar 2020

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 3197

Abstract

Moisture is one of the major causes of problems in buildings, and it can compromise their performance. Infrared thermography (IRT) is a non-destructive testing technology that can be used to assess the humidification phenomenon and, thus, prevent some of the problems caused by moisture. The images obtained by IRT reflect the thermal patterns of the surface under study and can be evaluated using a quantitative approach, which allows not only the traditional visualization of the thermal patterns but also quantification of surface temperatures and/or their differences. The relevance of this work is related to the discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of several methods to quantitatively assess the humidification phenomenon using IRT. For that purpose, the partial humidification by the bottom surface of a lightweight concrete specimen was considered as a case study. To evaluate the thermal gradients, the evolution of the thermal imaging throughout the measurement period and the definition of the areas particularly affected by moisture, a methodology that included a pre-processing phase for data reduction, followed by a data processing phase, were implemented. In the data processing, different statistical and numerical methods were tested. The results of the statistical descriptive analysis highlighted the time variation of the surface temperature, both when considering the entire specimen and when considering only specific areas. The variability of the temperatures at certain moments of the experiment could be observed in the box-plot representation. The image subtraction proved to be an interesting technique to quantify the temperature differences if the first image was used as reference. A thermal index, TI, was proposed to assess the cooling rate. The index highlighted the initial instant when the effect of moisture on the surface temperature was detectable. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

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10 pages, 1799 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Measuring the Water Content in Wood Using Step-Heating Thermography and Speckle Patterns-Preliminary Results

by Francisco J. Madruga, Stefano Sfarra, Stefano Perilli, Elena Pivarčiová and José M. López-Higuera

Sensors 2020, 20(1), 316; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20010316 - 6 Jan 2020

Cited by 20 | Viewed by 3559

Abstract

The relationship between wood and its degree of humidity is one of the most important aspects of its use in construction and restoration. The wood presents a behavior similar to a sponge, therefore, moisture is related to its expansion and contraction. The nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of the amount of moisture in wood materials allows to define, e.g., the restoration procedures of buildings or artworks. In this work, an integrated study of two non-contact techniques is presented. Infrared thermography (IRT) was able to retrieve thermal parameters of the wood related to the amount of water added to the samples, while the interference pattern generated by speckles was used to quantify the expansion and contraction of wood that can be related to the amount of water. In twenty-seven wooded samples, a known quantity of water was added in a controlled manner. By applying advanced image processing to thermograms and specklegrams, it was possible to determine fundamental values controlling both the absorption of water and the main thermophysical parameters that link the samples. On the one hand, results here shown should be considered preliminary because the experimental values obtained by IRT need to be optimized for low water contents introduced into the samples. On the other hand, speckle interferometry by applying an innovative procedure provided robust results for both high and low water contents. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

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24 pages, 16646 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Looking Through Paintings by Combining Hyper-Spectral Imaging and Pulse-Compression Thermography

by Stefano Laureti, Hamed Malekmohammadi, Muhammad Khalid Rizwan, Pietro Burrascano, Stefano Sfarra, Miranda Mostacci and Marco Ricci

Sensors 2019, 19(19), 4335; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19194335 - 8 Oct 2019

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 4131

Abstract

The use of different spectral bands in the inspection of artworks is highly recommended to identify the maximum number of defects/anomalies (i.e., the targets), whose presence ought to be known before any possible restoration action. Although an artwork cannot be considered as a composite material in which the zero-defect theory is usually followed by scientists, it is possible to state that the preservation of a multi-layered structure fabricated by the artist’s hands is based on a methodological analysis, where the use of non-destructive testing methods is highly desirable. In this paper, the infrared thermography and hyperspectral imaging methods were applied to identify both fabricated and non-fabricated targets in a canvas painting mocking up the famous character “Venus” by Botticelli. The pulse-compression thermography technique was used to retrieve info about the inner structure of the sample and low power light-emitting diode (LED) chips, whose emission was modulated via a pseudo-noise sequence, were exploited as the heat source for minimizing the heat radiated on the sample surface. Hyper-spectral imaging was employed to detect surface and subsurface features such as pentimenti and facial contours. The results demonstrate how the application of statistical algorithms (i.e., principal component and independent component analyses) maximized the number of targets retrieved during the post-acquisition steps for both the employed techniques. Finally, the best results obtained by both techniques and post-processing methods were fused together, resulting in a clear targets map, in which both the surface, subsurface and deeper information are all shown at a glance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

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16 pages, 11960 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Delamination Detection in Polymeric Ablative Materials Using Pulse-Compression Thermography and Air-Coupled Ultrasound

by Stefano Laureti, Muhammad Khalid Rizwan, Hamed Malekmohammadi, Pietro Burrascano, Maurizio Natali, Luigi Torre, Marco Rallini, Ivan Puri, David Hutchins and Marco Ricci

Sensors 2019, 19(9), 2198; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19092198 - 13 May 2019

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 4774

Abstract

Ablative materials are used extensively in the aerospace industry for protection against high thermal stresses and temperatures, an example being glass/silicone composites. The extreme conditions faced and the cost-risk related to the production/operating stage of such high-tech materials indicate the importance of detecting any anomaly or defect arising from the manufacturing process. In this paper, two different non-destructive testing techniques, namely active thermography and ultrasonic testing, have been used to detect a delamination in a glass/silicone composite. It is shown that a frequency modulated chirp signal and pulse-compression can successfully be used in active thermography for detecting such a delamination. Moreover, the same type of input signal and post-processing can be used to generate an image using air-coupled ultrasound, and an interesting comparison between the two can be made to further characterise the defect. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Infrared Thermography and Additional Non-Destructive Testing for Building, Structure and Material Inspections)

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