An investigation of non-destructive thermographic inspection exploiting phase transition of water for moisture detection in aircraft structures

In this work, thermographic investigation is done to find a suitable procedure to find penetrated water from the composite aircraft structures. This work is concentrating on the inspection method, where the whole structure is cooled below the freezing point of the water and then warmed into the room temperature. Phase transition energy, which is needed to melt the penetrated water, can be detected by thermography, either as an anomaly in individual thermocraphic images, or as a plateau in the thermocraphic monitoring curve