Project Description
Terahertz (THz) pulsed spectroscopy and imaging lies between the infrared and microwave parts of the spectrum and has the unique ability to go penetrate not metallic materials like plastics. THz has already been adopted in the plastics manufacturing industry for quality control, as it can be used to determine material properties, thickness, and defects like delamination. THz is also very good at determining water content, thus we proposed a preliminary study to characterize and assess the degradation of subsea plastic, and plastic coated pipework to determine the rate of degradation.
Using our THz system we have been able to characterise a number of polyethylene (PE) samples of different density. We have used a variety of accelerated aging processes (water, heat and UV) to determine the effect on the PE samples.
This project is scheduled to complete in June 2023.