Due to high-temperature resistance, high strength, and
excellent fatigue resistance, composite materials are widely used in
automotive manufacturing, aerospace, infrastructure and other
fields. Consequently, the demand for defect detection of composite
materials is also increasing. As a non-destructive testing
technique, the active infrared thermography, which can achieve
full-field defect detection, is suitable for defect detection of
composite materials. However, this method is susceptible to noises
caused by the environment and heating sources. In order to solve the
problem of the defect signal being submerged by these noises, a
multi-dimensional complementary ensemble empirical mode
decomposition (MCEEMD) algorithm is introduced in this paper. This
method can decompose the signal into the low-frequency background
noise, the high-frequency heating noise, and useful defect signals,
and these noises can be easily removed to improve the contrast to
noise ratio (CNR) of defect images. Based on this proposed method, a
defect detection experiment on the carbon fiber reinforced plastic
(CFRP) is performed in this paper, and experimental results show
that the method can effectively remove environmental noise and
heating noise, and it can detect 11 out of 12 defects on the CFRP
sample with an average CNR of 9.107. Compared with the traditional
differential absolute contrast method, this method can detect one
additional small defect with the aspect ratio of 1.67 and one deep
defect with a depth of 2 mm.