Electrothermal Imaging in One and Two Dimensions

Developing methods for the nondestructive testing of materials is an important area of research for industry. Situations often arise in which the integrity of an object is questioned, but testing it is very difficult. For example, a support bar may be embedded in a larger structure so that testing the bar’s integrity directly would require the impractical task of breaking down the larger structure. Instead, the ends of the bar might be accessible without dismantling the enclosing structure. The goal of nondestructive testing is to use methods that require taking measurements at the ends of the bar alone to give information about the interior of the bar. Two approaches of recent interest for nondestructive testing involve thermal imaging (using temperature measurements) and impedance imaging (using electrical measurements). This paper explores combining the two existing methods to produce a new method of performing nondestructive testing of materials