The use of halogen lamps and pulse-compression thermography for the non-destructive evaluation of a ceramic tile

This paper shows the application of the pulse-compression thermography for inspecting a ceramic tile containing different defects buried at different depths. The selection of an optimal coded waveform for modulating the on/off state of a halogen lamp systems plays a key role for the fruitful exploitation of such technique. This is thus discussed in detail considering the thermal properties of the inspected sample, which are very similar to that of other masonry materials used in civil engineering applications. The results shows that the proposed methodology is capable of evaluating the inner structure of the tile and to discriminate each defects in terms of its depth from the inspected surface.