Thermal diffusivity estimation with quantitative pulsed phase thermography

Quantitative Pulsed Phase Thermography (PPT) has been only used to estimate defect parameters such as depth and thermal resistance. Here, we propose a thermal quadrupole based method that extends quantitative pulsed phase thermography. This approach estimates thermal diffusivity by solving a inversion problem based on non-linear squares estimation. This approach is tested with pulsed thermography data acquired from a composite sample. We compare our results with another technique established in time domain. The proposed quantitative analysis with PPT provides estimates of thermal diffusivity close to those obtained with the time domain approach. This estimation requires only the a priori knowledge of sample thickness.