ABSTRACT
This chapter is an attempt to supply a rather general outlook of the history and state-of-the-art of the technology, as well as some perspective on thermal analysis and nondestructive testing. It focuses on the layered and composite structures which are in thermal equilibrium with their environment before testing, thus requiring thermal stimulation to demask any inner irregularities. A concurrent effort concerning thermal property measurements was the pioneering work by Parker et al. devoted to the “flash” method. In fact, Parker’s method for diffusivity measurement is very close to thermal NDT. When using infrared thermography for thermal analysis, characterization, and NDT purposes, the accepted terminology used in infrared techniques, heat transfer theory, and NDT has to be used. Thermal methods applied to solid analysis have now reached the level where researcher enthusiasm needs to be replaced with a careful description of the advantages and drawbacks of TANDT.
