Simultaneous Detection of Surface and Subsurface Defects in CFRP Based on Infrared Polarization Imaging

Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) has become an essential structural material in aerospace, new energy, rail transportation, and other fields due to its lightweight and high-strength properties. However, its complex manufacturing processes and demanding service environments can lead to various types of damage on both the surface and inside the material, significantly compromising safety. Existing detection techniques often adopt a step-by-step inspection mode, which results in complex processes and makes it difficult to achieve cross-dimensional correlation analysis of defects, leading to blind spots in structural health assessment. To address these issues, this paper proposes a method for simultaneous detection of surface and subsurface defects in CFRP based on infrared polarization imaging. First, we developed an infrared polarization imaging-based defect detection system and collected a CFRP defect dataset of samples containing various surface and subsurface defects. Then, we proposed a surface and subsurface defect detection network, which integrates extracted thermal diffusion features and polarization features to decouple and enhance surface and subsurface features. Through the constraints of multi-task defect detection, simultaneous detection of surface and subsurface defects is achieved. The experiments on the collected CFRP defect dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.