Recent advances on infrared thermography for ceramic tiles detachments diagnosis: literature review

Structures are subject to the direct action of environmental agents such as humidity and temperature variations. These conditions can strongly influence the degradation of materials and even accelerate it. On building facades, degradation intensifies the infiltration of rainwater and the loss of adhesion of ceramic coverings. Early identification of detachment by visual inspection is challenging. The trend observed in literature reports is that infrared thermography is an alternative tool to help identify damage to facades in addition to other applications. However, this technique is not fully addressed, and advances are needed for full-scale application. Thermography is a non-destructive test that measures and records the surface's infrared temperature according to the material's thermal emissivity. Thermograms can be recorded far from the analyzed surface without further damaging the structure. Therefore, this article's main objective is to analyze literature reports from 2014 to 2023 related to thermography approaches and applications. A discussion of the physical and environmental factors that influence thermographic measurements and a comparative analysis of approaches based on thermal image processing are presented. Analysis of the results indicates that the image capture distance, temperature, position of the sun, characteristics of the ceramic plates, edge effects and the influence of reflections are not widely discussed in other works. The main findings point to the need for a more detailed protocol or guideline for thermographic measurements in the field considering multi multi-parameters. The application of the technique shows promise. Finally, new trends for future research are highlighted in the final section of this article.