Precision measurement of crack closure state with vibrothermography

Crack closure state is a controlling parameter in Vibrothermographpy testing as well as other Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques. The closure phenomenon reduces probability of detection (POD) by reducing the effective crack size. For this reason, understanding and quantifying closure has implications in the field of NDE. Cracks grown under fatigue have unpredictable and diffcult to quantify closure states. We propose a simple model to quantify crack closure and measure residual stress. The analysis is limited to the case of 1D residual loading of a through crack. Extensions can be made to the more applicable semi-elliptical surface crack. This model is introduced to replace the model previously suggested by Renshaw [1]. The model is applied to thermal data taken on rectangular test specimens with fatigue cracks.