Active infrared thermography is a fast and accurate non-destructive evaluation technique that is of particular relevance to the aerospace industry for the inspection of aircraft and helicopters’ primary and secondary structures, aero-engine parts, spacecraft components and its subsystems. This review provides an exhaustive summary of most recent active thermographic methods used for aerospace applications according to their physical principle and thermal excitation sources. Besides traditional optically stimulated thermography, which uses external optical radiation such as flashes, heaters and laser systems, novel hybrid thermographic techniques are also investigated. These include ultrasonic stimulated thermography, which uses ultrasonic waves and the local damage resonance effect to enhance the reliability and sensitivity to micro-cracks, eddy current stimulated thermography, which uses cost-effective eddy current excitation to generate induction heating, and microwave thermography, which uses electromagnetic radiation at the microwave frequency bands to provide rapid detection of cracks and delamination. All these techniques are here analysed and numerous examples are provided for different damage scenarios and aerospace components in order to identify the strength and limitations of each thermographic technique. Moreover, alternative strategies to current external thermal excitation sources, here named as material-based thermography methods, are examined in this paper. These novel thermographic techniques rely on thermoresistive internal heating and offer a fast, low power, accurate and reliable assessment of damage in aerospace composites.

The structural health monitoring (SHM) of structures is acquiring a key role in the present time. An in situ system able to assess the health state of bolted joints would save money and maintenance time, by allowing quick assessment of residual life and degradation state of structures. In the last decades, SHM systems based on linear acoustic/ultrasound methods have been investigated extensively. The scope of this study was to develop a reliable index able to assess the loosening/tightening health state of a bolted structure based on linear and nonlinear acoustic/ultrasound parameters. In particular, for the linear acoustic/ultrasound method, a tightening/loosening state index based on the first-order acoustic moment was developed. This method is based on the assumption that a change of signal energy would be recorded for different loosening/tightening states. As for the nonlinear methods, under single- and multi-frequency excitation, high-harmonics generation and sidebands modulation indices were developed. The developed tightening/loosening state index trend was very well reproduced by an analytical expression where they are expressed as function of the torque applied. In particular, the fully loosened (kissing bond) and tight state of bolted structures can be clearly identified by the measured plateau region. The proposed analytical trend approximates the experimental results with excellent correlation. By knowing this trend and measuring the proposed indices, it would be possible to know the torque applied on the bolt and therefore assess the health state of a bolted structure.