Total Focusing in the Virtual Wave Domain: 3D Defect Reconstruction Using Spatially Structured Laser Heating

Classical active thermographic testing of industrial goods has mostly been limited to generating 2D defect maps. While for surface or near-surface defect detection, this is a desired result, for deeply buried defects, a 3D reconstruction of the defect geometry is coveted. This general trend can also be well observed in widely used NDT methods (radiography, ultrasonic testing), where the progression from 2D to 3D reconstruction methods has already made profound progress (CT, UT phased array transducers). Achieving a fully 3D defect reconstruction in active thermographic testing suffers from the diffusive nature of thermal processes. One possible solution to deal with thermal diffusion is the application of the virtual-wave concept, which, by solving an inverse problem, allows the diffusiveness to be extracted from the thermographic data in the post-processing stage. What is left follows propagating-wave physics, enabling the usage of well-known algorithms from ultrasonic testing. In this work, we present our progress in the 3D reconstruction of deeply buried defects using spatially structured laser heating in conjunction with applying the well-known total focusing method (TFM) in the virtual-wave domain.