Infrared thermography of impact-driven thermal effects

The attention of this note is focused on the use of an infrared imaging system to monitor the unsteady thermal response of a glass fibre-reinforced polymer material to impact load. On the monitored surface during impact, the material undergoes first a cooling down due to thermo-elastic effects and then heating up because of dissipation of the impact mechanical energy. Mainly within the elastic phase, temperature variations occur during a very short time (fractions of seconds) and, thus, their visualisation can be performed only with a high-frequency imaging device. In this work, measurements were performed essentially during the elastic phase with the FLIR ThermaCam SC3000, which allows for a frame rate up to 900 Hz.