An inverse problem technique for detecting irregular cavities in circular cylinders by infrared scanning

An inverse problem technique has been developed for detecting irregular cavities in circular cylinders. In this method, the cavity is considered a part of the unknown geometry of the investigated system, and the evaluated temperature is used to locate this geometry. An auxiliary problem is introduced in the solution of this problem; and in the solution, the cavity wall is located by forcing the temperature to satisfy the condition imposed at the cavity. The new methodology is validated by an experiment presented in this paper, and the test results indicate that this method is highly successful in locating cavities. The accuracy of the method is closely related to the accuracy of the temperature that can be measured at the surface. A small error in the surface temperature results in a slight cavity error for deep cavities, while a shallow cavity is not severely affected by a surface temperature error. This method is particularly attractive in detecting shallow cavities in nondestructive evaluation.