Application of golay complementary coded excitation schemes for non-destructive testing of sandwich structures

•A novel Golay coded infrared/thermal wave imaging is introduced.•Time domain analysis scheme is proposed for testing of sandwich structures.•Experimental results show the improved performance for detection of delaminations.

In recent years, InfraRed Thermography (IRT) has become a widely accepted non-destructive testing technique to evaluate the structural integrity of composite sandwich structures due to its full-field, remote, fast and in-service inspection capabilities. This paper presents a novel infrared thermographic approach named as Golay complementary coded thermal wave imaging is presented to detect disbonds in a sandwich structure having face sheets from Glass/Carbon Fibre Reinforced (GFR/CFR) laminates and core of the wooden block.