Portable Active Thermographic Coating Inspection System

This proposal seeks to produce a unique thermographic coating inspection system that is customized for the inspection of bridge coatings. This system uses active thermography where IR sources are used to provide controlled heating to a coating system. The presence of a defect in a coating system will result in differences in heat flow, which can be imaged with an infrared camera. An off-the-shelf embedded infrared camera module is used to create a customized system. This system can cover a wide area and provide easy-to-interpret images. The system is unique in that it is low-cost, low-weight, small-sized, fully-integrated, and specifically customized for coating inspections. There are no commercial systems that provide a fully-integrated active thermographic inspection sytem for bridge coatings. The proposed system is small and light-weight such that it can be deployed as a hand-held unit, on a pole-mount, or a vehicle-mast. The system will be used to inspect bridge coating systems and will proide data in a manner that is currently not possible. The coat and ease-of-use of the system make it usable by typical DOT personnel. The project team has considerable experience in the bridge inspection industry and has a history of development of NDE tools for bridge inspection.