WSEAS Transactions on Applied and Theoretical Mechanics
Print ISSN: 1991-8747, E-ISSN: 2224-3429
Volume 11, 2016
Nondestructive Defect Evaluation of Polyethylene Pipes
Authors: , , , ,
Abstract: We report an approach for nondestructive testing and evaluation of polyethylene pipes by using active infrared thermography technique, in which an electrical heating bar and a high-sensitivity high-speed infrared camera was respectively used as the novel thermal excitation source and the detector. Mathematical morphology is employed for defect feature extraction from thermographic images and realized the automatic evaluation of PE pipe defects. Various defects with different dimensions in PE pipes were investigated and they would affect the thermal distributions from which the relationship between thermographic images and defect sizes and locations was established. A finite element model was built to mimic the transient heat transfer in PE pipes. The finite element simulation results are well agreed with the one obtained from experiments and it demonstrated that finite element method can be an effective method to analyze infrared imaging. To further verify the capability of developed active infrared thermography in defect detection of PE pipes, defects in heat fusion joints of PE pipes were fabricated and measured. The experimental results showed that active infrared thermography based on an electrical heating bar, with defect extraction by mathematical morphology, could provide a novel tool for nondestructive evaluation and health monitoring of PE pipes.
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Pages: 107-113
WSEAS Transactions on Applied and Theoretical Mechanics, ISSN / E-ISSN: 1991-8747 / 2224-3429, Volume 11, 2016, Art. #13