Inspection of a helicopter blade using drone-based active thermography

Shashank Pant; Marc Genest; Clemente Ibarra-Castanedo; Nicolas P. Avdelidis; Julio Valdes; Shakeb Deane; Argyrios Zolotas; Xavier P. Maldague

doi:10.1117/12.2665495

12 June 2023 Inspection of a helicopter blade using drone-based active thermography

Shashank Pant, Marc Genest, Clemente Ibarra-Castanedo, Nicolas P. Avdelidis, Julio Valdes, Shakeb Deane, Argyrios Zolotas, Xavier P. Maldague

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 12536, Thermosense: Thermal Infrared Applications XLV; 125360T (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2665495
Event: SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, 2023, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

A drone-based inspection system that can move “freely” around an aircraft to perform the inspection of all the areas of interest in a fast and effective manner can have significant impact in reducing inspection time and cost. However, active thermography inspection using drone is challenging because the drone carrying the optical and thermal cameras is subjected to vibration and undesired motion. Since active thermography relies on the pixel temperature evolution over time, an unstable thermal video from a flying drone can cause error in the output results as any movement between the acquired images will affect the pixel position in the successive frames and thus disrupt the monitoring of the temperature evolution. This paper presents the outcome of experimental runs, where a commercially available drone equipped with both thermal and optical cameras was used to inspect a helicopter Main Rotor Blade (MRB) in a laboratory environment.

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Citation Download Citation

Shashank Pant, Marc Genest, Clemente Ibarra-Castanedo, Nicolas P. Avdelidis, Julio Valdes, Shakeb Deane, Argyrios Zolotas, and Xavier P. Maldague "Inspection of a helicopter blade using drone-based active thermography", Proc. SPIE 12536, Thermosense: Thermal Infrared Applications XLV, 125360T (12 June 2023); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2665495

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