Patent ID: 8393784

Claim:
A method for identifying material characteristic types of flaws in a composite object, the method comprising the steps of: a) rapidly heating the surface of the composite object; b) recording pixel intensities in a sequence of IR images, each image sequentially related to time elapsed since heating the surface in step (a); c) determining temperature-versus-time data for each of the pixels from the IR images; and d) determining what material characteristic type of flaw if any corresponds to each of the pixels using the temperature-versus-time data determined in step (c), step (d) including determining a contrast curve for each of the pixels from the temperature-versus-time data for each of the pixels and using the contrast curve in determining what type of flaws if any corresponds to each of the pixels, and the flaws including a layer of porosity characterized by a leading peak followed by a trough in the contrast curve.