The Experimental Research of Delamination Damage Location Based on FBG Sensors Network in Solid Rocket Motor Shell

The fiber reinforced composite materials were widely used for aerospace aircrafts and missile weapons, and the delamination was a major problem which reduced the structural integrity and reliability of the solid rocket motor (SRM) composite shell seriously. In order to locate the delamination damage, the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) strain sensors network was embedded in SRM shell, and a multi-step approach of delamination damage location based on strain energy was performed: the strain field was measured in a scatter grid by the FBG strain sensors network in hydraulic testing; then the continuous displacement and strain field was reconstructed with relative sensors data using a moving least square (MLS) mesh-free fitting method; the strain energy of each subregions was calculated from the reconstructed data; finally the damaged subregions was identified successfully by singularity value of strain energy. The results of simulation and experiment indicated that the damage identification and location only required the measure of strain field of the SRM shell, and the presented approach achieved higher accuracy.