Composite Structures 111 (2014) 13–19

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Composite Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compstruct

Bond defect detection using PTT IRT in concrete structures strengthened

with different CFRP systems
Jawdat Tashan a,⇑, Riadh Al-Mahaidi b,1
a
Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, PO Box 218, Hawthorn, Vic 3122, Australia
b
Structural Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences (ATC737), Swinburne University of Technology, PO Box 218, Hawthorn, Vic 3122, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the context of increased use of carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) to strengthen concrete
Available online 24 December 2013 structures, the bonding conditions between CFRP and existing structures are crucial. Recently, infrared
thermography (IR) non-destructive testing (NDT) has emerged as a technique for bond detection. This
Keywords: paper reports in detail the detection of different unbond, debonding and delamination areas within the
CFRP bond zone between single- and multi-layer CFRP and concrete structures. Pulse thermography (PTT)
PTT Infra-Red thermography was chosen for the IR tests. Pulse intervals of 1 s, 3 s, and 5 s were used as thermal loading to all speci-
NDT
mens and halogen lamps were positioned at different distances from the investigated surfaces. Each IR
test involved the analysis of 600 IR images. Thermal responses were recorded to detect and study defect
characterizations. The paper recommends the minimum thermal input to generate well-recognized bond
defect detection, and the results show that the maximum thermal signal is proportional to the number of
CFRP layers.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction rhofer and Roelling investigated delaminations in masonry

Unbond, debonding and delamination areas within the bond
zone between CFRP and concrete are the most common defects
that may occur as a result of improper installation of CFRP, and
these types of defect can severely reduce the system integrity. Pre-
vious works have studied the detection of bond defects by using
different types of non-destructive tests (NDTs). One of the most ad-
vanced NDTs that have been used recently to detect these defects
is the Infrared thermography (IRT).
A number of investigations have been carried out using IRT NDT
for testing composite CFRP systems attached externally to struc-
tures. An investigation of debonding FRP laminates externally
attached to reinforced concrete was conducted by Valluzzi et al.
[1]. A full-scale beam was loaded to failure. Pre-tensioned FRP
laminates were applied to the beam and reloaded under IRT moni-
toring. The study indicated that IRT can be employed in the propa-
gation detection of debond zones. The researchers emphasized
that more work is needed to study defect sizes and investigate their
development in the structural element under loading. IRT has also
been used to evaluate historical buildings [2]. In this study, Maie-
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 289 788 1787.
E-mail addresses: jawdattashan@yahoo.com (J. Tashan), ralmahaidi@swin.
edu.au (R. Al-Mahaidi).
1
Tel.: +61 0 3 9214 8429, mobile: +61 0 421 910 593.
buildings.
Brown and Hamilton [3–5] investigated the detection of bond
defects in reinforced concrete beams strengthened externally with
FRP composites. Various sizes of artificial holes were drilled and
then filled with materials that had different thermal conductivity
factors than that of the concrete. They concluded that IRT has great
potential as a non-destructive technology to detect debond areas in
FRP-concrete structures. However, the IR inspections performed
before and after the cyclic loading did not reveal any changes in
the FRP bond. The researchers recommended more work to deter-
mine how flexural crack-induced debonding progresses.
In spite of all previous studies that conducted to investigate the
detection of different bond defects, more work still needed to exam
the IRT efficiency [6]. The present paper presents the experimental
study of applying IRT on CFRP-concrete samples containing various
types of bond defects with different kinds of FRP fabrics and
laminates.
2. Infrared thermography
IRT is a method which reads the electromagnetic radiation
emitted from the object’s surface or medium of interest and con-
verts it to temperature. If a pulse heat flux is distributed homoge-
nously to a surface that does not have any defects, the surface
temperature alteration must be uniform. Otherwise, the heat
transformation inside the examined material will be disturbed

0263-8223/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compstruct.2013.12.016
14 J. Tashan, R. Al-Mahaidi / Composite Structures 111 (2014) 13–19
[7,8]. Heat transformation changes will appear as (hot spots) in
surface temperature, as shown in Fig. 1. The detection of defects
in concrete specimens depends on the principle that the thermal
conductivity of the air in the defected areas is lower than that of
concrete. Consequently, the non-homogenous heat transfer be-
tween the CFRP and the host concrete keeps these defects ‘war-
mer’, resulting in hot spots in the thermographic images
captured by the IR detector.
Most bond defects in concrete structures are due to imperfec-
tions in the installation of the CFRP system and cracks which devel-
op under loading. Poor surface preparation and sharp edges on the
surface can lead to severe bonding faults in the bonding zone. In
the long term, environmental degradation can also cause bond de-
fects. The main defects can be categorized in five types: unbonded
defects, debonded defects, delaminations, spalls in the concrete
substrate structure, and cracks in the concrete surface. Unbonded
areas are defined as the areas of the CFRP system that were not
bonded adequately during CFRP installation. Debond faults refer
to CFRP areas that were fully bonded to the structure in the first
place, but later the bonding in that specific area was reduced to
an unacceptable level. Usually debonding defects occur due to
excessive loading. The absence of bond between the multi-CFRP
layers is denoted as delamination. Impact or excessive loading
are the main reasons for this kind of failure. Spalling is a kind of
debonding in which the bond does not fail in the bonding zone
but the failure occurs below the concrete surface. This leads to
the separation of the CFRP system with a thin layer of concrete
from the whole concrete structure. The concrete-reinforcement
cover is the area where most spall defects occur. Cracks in the con-
crete surface can lead to debonding faults in the CFRP-concrete
bond region. Generally, spalling and cracks occur due to loading.
Fig. 2 presents the locations of unbonded defects, debonded de-
fects, delaminations, and spalling that can occur in CFRP-concrete
structures. Early detection of bonding defects in the CFRP-concrete
zone can prevent the reduction of the integrity of the CFRP
composite.
Pulse infrared thermography (PTT IR) was used in the present
study. An NEC Thermo Tracer TH9260 thermal camera [9] and hal-
ogen heating lamps [10] were used. Fig. 3(a) shows the schematic
of the IRT set-up applied to the specimens investigated. Practically,
just after the thermal pulse, a series of infrared images of the spec-
imen surface were recorded, as shown in Fig. 3(b). The acquisition
rate was designed to capture images at 0.25 s intervals. In the ac-
quired digitized thermal images, the discontinuities appear with
different temperatures relative to the pristine areas at the speci-
men surface. Defect areas were localized and highlighted visually
in the thermal images. Subsequently, thermal analyses were per-
formed on the thermal image series to obtain thermal responses
of the defects, as shown in Fig. 3(c).
A wide variety of thermal response patterns can be obtained
using different thermography techniques. The most common
Fig. 1. Hot spot localization by IR inspection.
Fig. 2. Potential bond defects in CFRP-concrete structure.
thermal responses in PTT IR are the thermal signal DT and thermal
contrast C. These responses can be computed by selecting a region
considered to be free of significant discontinuities and used to
determine the reference response. The next step is a pixel-by-pixel
computation of time evolution function of the thermal difference
DT (t) or thermal contrast C (t). The thermal response patterns
(thermal signals and thermal contrast) make the interpretation of
thermal images by an operator more effective and result in better
defect detection. The time-dependent thermal signal DT (t) can be
calculated from Eq. (1).
DTðtÞ ¼ TðtÞdefect  TðtÞbackground ð1Þ
where, DT (t) is the thermal signal at specific time (t); T (t)defect is
the surface temperature recorded above the defect at specific time;
and T (t)background is the surface temperature recorded in the back-
ground where no sub-surface defect is present at specific time; this
temperature should be localized with sufficient distance from the
defect.
The thermal contrast C(t) can be computed from Eq. (2). The
goal of processing thermal images with the function of thermal
contrast is to indicate the amount of noise in thermal analysis
and to improve the discontinuity characterization.
 
CðtÞ ¼ DTðtÞ= TðtÞbackground  TðtÞambient ð2Þ
where, C (t) is the thermal contrast at specific time (t), DT (t) is the
thermal signal of the defect at specific time in degrees Celsius, T
(t)background is the record surface temperature in the surrounding de-
fect-free areas at specific time in degrees Celsius, T (t)ambient is he
ambient temperature; most of the tests were conducted at 20 °C.
The IR results are presented by constructing thermal signal/con-
trast versus time maps. Thermal signals or thermal contrasts re-
spond in different patterns with time. Three patterns were
identified in the time-dependent thermal signal response as
follows:
 Pattern A: where the defect detection has a pulse curve shape
and thermal response maximum value of DTmax or Cmax at time
equal to tmax and minimum value DTmin or Cmin at the end of the
recording. Fig. 4(a) shows this pattern.
 Pattern B: This pattern starts with decreasing thermal response
behaviour until a local minimum value is reached at t = tmin,
then the recorded signals follow the same behaviour as pattern
A. Fig. 4(b) illustrates this pattern.
 Pattern C: This pattern starts with a negative slope and the ther-
mal response continues to shrink until the end of the test.
Fig. 4(c) illustrates a model curve of this pattern.
3. Experimental program
3.1. Specimens
Studies of specimens strengthened only with unidirectional
CFRP fabric CF130 have been conducted previously by the present
 J. Tashan, R. Al-Mahaidi / Composite Structures 111 (2014) 13–19 15

Fig. 3. (a) Pulsed heat wave and infrared recorded wave in the PTT scheme, (b) sequence of recorded thermal images, (c) temperature evolution for pixel (m,n).

Fig. 4. Thermal signal patterns with time: (a) Pattern A, (b) Pattern B, (c) Pattern C.

authors [11,12]. The focus of this paper is therefore CFRP-concrete
specimens fabricated with CFRP fabric CF140 and laminates. Four
plain concrete samples with dimensions of 300  300  50 mm
were fabricated. The concrete surface was prepared before attach-
ing the CFRP fabric to the specimens. The average strength of the
concrete was 65 MPa. Uni-directional wave MBrace CF 140 CFRP
fabric and MBrace 1.4 mm FRP laminate were used [13,14]. The
CFRP fabrics were attached as single and double layers to the con-
crete specimens. A threaded roller was used to squeeze out natural
air voids at the interface. To ensure that no resin crossed to the
cracked areas, a careful application procedure was followed. All
CFRP applications used in the strengthening concrete system were
painted black with paint with a known emissivity value of 0.94.
Table 1 describes the thermal properties and thicknesses of the
materials.
Two layers of unidirectional CFRP fabric CF140 were used in the
Specimen 1 concrete strengthening system. Unbonded and delam-
ination areas were used in the designed defects to study the differ-
ence in bond defects under single and multiple CFRP sheets of
CF140, as shown in Fig. 5(a). A combination of CFRP CF140 fabric
16 J. Tashan, R. Al-Mahaidi / Composite Structures 111 (2014) 13–19

Table 1
Material thermal properties and thicknesses.

Properties Concrete MBrace resin CFRP fabric CF130 CFRP fabric CF140 CFRP laminate
Thickness (mm) 50 1 0.176 0.235 1.3
Density (kg/m3) 2400 983 1700 1700 1600
Specific heat (J/kg °C) 800 1700 800 800 700
Thermal conductivity (W/m °C) 1.5 0.19 9.38 9.38 7

Table 2
Identification of artificial defects.

Specimen Unbonding defects Debonding defects Delaminations

1 UB013–UB014 DL011–DL012
2 UB021–UB022
3 DB031
4 UB041 DL042

Two CFRP laminate strips 80 mm  300 mm  1.4 mm were ap-

plied to Specimen 4. The first strip designed with a single CFRP
layer while a double laminates design was used in the next one.
The artificial bond defect areas were left unbonded when the resin
was applied at the bond zone. Delamination areas were designed
with a size of 80 mm  70 mm at the centre of the laminates. After
the application of the laminate, a CF130 fabric composite was at-
tached on top of the concrete–laminate system. Fig. 5(d) shows
Specimen 5 details with the laminates applied. Table 2 shows the
identification of specimen defects.
The embedded defects were categorized in groups and labelled.
The series of unbond defects was labelled UB followed by two

Fig. 5. Specimen details: (a) Specimen 1, (b) Specimen 2, (c) Specimen 3, (d)
Specimen 4.

Fig. 6. Specimen 2 CFRP laminate and fabric.

and CFRP laminate was utilized in Specimen 2, as shown in Figs.

5(b) and 6. The unbonded flaw was located under both the fabric
and the laminate systems.
Single CF140 fabric was fully bonded to concrete Specimen 3.
An artificial random debonding fault was created in this specimen
by inserting a small wide-headed nail in the CFRP fabric layer. The
nail was then pulled slightly up for 50 min until the resin hard-
ened. The intention was to create a random-shaped debonding
area and to understand how debonding detection in an existing
epoxy layer may differ from unbonding detection. Fig. 5(c) illus-
trates Specimen 3. Fig. 7. Thermal signals of defects in Specimen 1: (a) UB013, (b) UB014.
 J. Tashan, R. Al-Mahaidi / Composite Structures 111 (2014) 13–19
digits for the specimen number. The final number in the defect
identity label was for the defect number within the selected spec-
imen. An example of this defect identification is UB013: UB refers
to unbonded defective area, 01 refers to Specimen 1 and the final
number 3 states that this defect is the third defect within Specimen
1. As shown in Fig. 5 defect identification starting with DB refers to
all debonding areas generated between the CFRP composites and
substructures. DL refers to delamination defects between multiple
CFRP layers.
4. Results and discussion
Unbonded area defects under multiple CFRP fabric layers were
examined by PTT IRT on Specimen 1. Defects UB013 and UB014
were identified clearly. Defect UB014 (under double CF140 sheets)
had a smaller thermal signal compared with UB013. Fig. 7 indicates
that, by increasing the distance between the heat source and the
investigated surface, the DTmax ratio of a defect under a single CFRP
layer to a defect under a double layer increases. The maximum
thermal signal detection under a single CFRP layer is just above
double that of the DTmax UB014 beneath double CFRP layers when
the heat source is positioned at 50 cm. By increasing the heat exci-
tation source distance to 1.2 m, the ratio of DTmax between a single
and multiple layers rises to 400%, as shown in Fig. 7.
A region of interest with a line shape was considered across
Specimen 2’s unbonded defects, as shown in Fig. 8. The UB021
and UB022 faults were inserted in the specimen as demonstrated
Fig. 8. Specimen 2 defect signals: (a) Specimen 2 region of interest in a line shape; (b) defects of Specimen 2 surface temperatures; (c) three-dimensional profile of region of
interest in a line shape; (d) defects of Specimen 2 thermal signals.
17
in Fig. 5(b). The line profile thermal response is presented in
Fig. 8(b), which shows how big the difference is in the acquired
surface temperatures between the single layer defect UB021 and
UB022 that is covered by two different CFRP layers (fabric and lam-
inate). As shown in Fig. 8(c), UB022 continues to record a higher
temperature compared to the defect-free area over the laminate.
The UB021 defect recorded the maximum temperature immedi-
ately after the end of the pulse of one second. The response of the
UB022 defect was different in terms of the timing. The UB022 reg-
istered its maximum thermal signal 8.5 s from the pulse injection.
Fig. 8(d) highlights the differences in the thermal signals of Speci-
men 2 defects. The detectability under a single CFRP fabric layer
was 130% greater than for the two different layers for different
pulse durations, as shown in Fig. 8(d). The signals for the UB021
defect faded faster than those for UB022. The rates of signal fading
are much smaller in defects with multi-layers than a single layer.
The UB022 thermal signal still read about 2 °C after 90 s, while
the UB021 signal reduced to zero after 30 s from the start of the
IR test, as shown in Fig. 8(d).
Specimen 3 was fabricated with an artificial debonding area un-
der CFRP fabric Type CF140. For different pulse durations with dif-
ferent excitation source distances, Specimen 3 shows pattern B
signals as shown in Fig. 9. Decreasing the input heating and short-
ening the duration of the heating pulses bridge the gap between
the maximum DT. The pulse of 5 s from 50 cm in Fig. 9 was noticed
to have a signal of 2.5 °C even after the end of the thermal test at
100 s.
18 J. Tashan, R. Al-Mahaidi / Composite Structures 111 (2014) 13–19

Fig. 9. Debond DB031 signals.

Fig. 10. Contrast of DB031: (a) at 5 s pulse, (b) at 1 s pulse.

Fig. 10 confirms that the contrast values that calculated from

Eq. (2) are noisier than the signals. For that reason, the contrast re-
sponses required more smoothing in the construction of Fig. 10.
The results indicate that the noise level is high when the surface
receives more heat from the near lamps, as shown in the difference
between the contrasts after the end of the pulse in Fig. 10(a). At
50 cm excitation distance, the smoothed maximum contrast Cmax
decreases from 8.7 when the pulse is applied for 5 s to 7.2 for a
1 s pulse interval. The C values shown in Fig. 10(b) for 50 cm and Fig. 11. Defect DL042: (a) location of DL042, (b) thermal signals, (c) contrast at 5 s,
1 s pulse durations display more noise compared to the 5 s pulse (d) contrast at 1 s.
length shown in Fig. 10(a).
 J. Tashan, R. Al-Mahaidi / Composite Structures 111 (2014) 13–19
The ability of IRT to identify delamination defects was studied
by testing Specimen 4. This specimen was constructed with an arti-
ficial delamination defect, as shown in Fig. 5(d). In spite of the
three CFRP composite layers on the surface of this concrete speci-
men, the delamination defect between the double FRP laminates
was very detectable for applied heating intensities imposed for dif-
ferent pulse durations. The thermal image in Fig. 11(a) exhibits de-
fect DL042’s shape and location in Specimen 4. Fig. 11(b) show that
the signal was more than 2.5 °C, even for short pulses at 1 s from
half a metre. The DTmax with exposure of the CFRP surface for 5 s
was just below 5 °C, which is a good signal for the location of po-
tential flaws in the bonding zone. It was noticed that, by reducing
the input heat wave when the lamps are positioned around 1 m,
the signals are weak to unacceptable. The signals for pulse inter-
vals from 1 s to 5 s at 1 m show very low values at less than
0.5 °C, due to the effect of installing multi-CFRP layers above the
delamination DL042, which hinder heat wave transmission and
produce shallow thermal responses.
The thermal contrasts calculated during the IR analyses of
delamination under multi-layers of CFRP composites follow Pat-
tern B as shown in Fig. 4. Fig. 11(c) and (d) highlight contrast reg-
isters its maximum values almost at the end of the IR test. This
makes the value of the contrast unreliable, especially with the
amount of noise that increases towards the end of the IR test. As
shown in Fig. 11(c), the maximum contrast captured for this defect
was 3.6. However, due to the unacceptable noise level this C value
is inappropriate.
5. Conclusions
The results of an experimental study to investigate the ability of
IR thermography as a NDT to detect and measure different bond
defects between CFRP composites and concrete specimens have
been presented in this paper. PTT IRT was used for the experiments
which show that the technique proves that the detection of differ-
ent bond defects can be achieved even with pulse intervals of 1s.
However, other fast PTTs with higher pulse lengths at 3 s and 5 s
show higher signals and contrasts in the thermal analyses. For un-
bond defects under different CFRP fabrics, the maximum thermal
signal increases lineally with increasing input heat flux. To gener-
ate well-recognized detection for bond defects the input heat flux
is recommended to be greater than 500 W/m2 and the pulse length
more than 1 s. The results also show that the maximum thermal
signal is proportional to the number of CFRP layers. It decreases
19
to about half with the increase of CFRP fabric sheets to 2 layers.
On the other hand, by increasing the number of CFRP layers, the
contrast of a delamination will produce unacceptable noise levels
and provide irrelevant C values.
Acknowledgement
The authors acknowledge the services provided by the Depart-
ment of Civil Engineering at Monash University.
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