Heat may detect invisible damage in concrete supports

said braka 4:01 AM
TPU Professor Vladimir Vavilov, the head of R&D

Laboratory for Thermal Control says: "Now, all railways in Russia are electrified, there is a great number of supports for wires and auxiliary equipment along the railways. Like any construction, they have their service life, which is 50 years. As the service life expires, the supports become unfit for use with obvious negative consequences. It is impossible to replace all supports simultaneously. Therefore, it is necessary to identify those that should be replaced first. Ultrasonic testing is traditionally used for this purpose. Such testing takes up to one day. We propose thermal testing.
Here the process takes a few minutes and about an hour together with all preparation works."
To test a support, an inductor is placed around it, which presents an antenna heating the reinforcement inside the support. It is enough to heat the reinforcement a few degrees higher than the ambient temperature. The support heated with the reinforcement radiates heat, which is detected with  installed at a distance of several meters from the support. A thermogram, e.g. a colorful image in infrared rays, which shows temperature distribution at the tested surface, is transmitted from the cameras to the computer.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-02-invisible-concrete.html#jCp