Non-destructive inspection of drilled holes in reinforced honeycomb sandwich panels using active thermography

The aerospace industry is in constant need of ever-more efficient inspection methods for quality control. Product inspection is also essential to maintain the safe operation of aircraft components designed to perform for decades. This paper proposes a method for non-destructive inspection of drilled holes in reinforced honeycomb sandwich panels. Honeycomb sandwich panels are extensively employed in the aerospace industry due to their high strength and stiffness to weight ratios. In order to attach additional structures to them, panels are reinforced by filling honeycomb cells and drilling holes into the reinforced areas. The proposed procedure is designed to detect the position of the holes within the reinforced area and to provide a robust measurement of the distance between each hole and the boundary of the reinforced area. The result is a fast, safe and clean inspection method for drilled holes in reinforced honeycomb sandwich panels that can be used to robustly assess a possible displacement of the hole from the center of the reinforced area, which could have serious consequences. The proposed method is based on active infrared thermography, and uses state of the art methods for infrared image processing, including signal-to-nose ratio enhancement, hole detection and segmentation. Tests and comparison with X-ray inspections indicate that the proposed system meets production needs.