CT applied as a reference technique for evaluating active lock-in thermography in characterizing CFRP impact damage test samples

Detection of impact damages in CFRP test samples with active lock-in thermography is fast and non-tactile, but in general it does not easily reveal the 3D geometry of the quantity of interest. Computed tomography (CT) is a holistic technique capable of characterizing most of the occurring impact damages in CFRP samples, but due to measuring envelope limitation and timeconsuming data capturing it is inappropriate for mass production. On the other hand, recent developments have made possible quantifying 3D impact damage geometry properties through thermography. From this perspective, CT setting optimization for imaging CFRP test samples with induced impact damage is put under scrutiny in this paper, whose results will be important to validate thermography-based dimensional content.