Damage Characterisation of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Composite Plate Using Acoustic Emission

Abstract:

Acoustic Emission (AE) is a sensitive technique which can be used to characterise damage in high strength composite plate. This paper describes an extension to an earlier piece of research work carried out by the ERC which resulted in the successful development of a novel source location methodology for the said material. The previous work concentrated on the source location in plate-like composite structures using acoustic emission. The work presented in this paper focuses on establishing the correlation between the different damage types suffered in the material namely de-lamination, matrix cracking, fibre rupture and stringer to skin debonding with key signal features of the AE activities. Controlled bending tests were initially carried out on laterally grooved slender composite specimens to progressively propagate damage in the weakened region of these specimens. The composite laminate plate itself is made from 16 plies of carbon fibre twill weaved in an epoxy matrix with bidirectional fibre alignments in the 0° and 90° directions with 60/40 fibre-matrix volume composition. These prepared samples were fully instrumented with broad band (100 kHz to 1MHz) Physical Acoustic AE sensors linked to the necessary signal conditioning hardware. The AE events were recorded using a high speed DAQ card accessed by customised software written in LabVIEW^TM. Gathered raw data were analysed off-line for key signal features including energy and frequency contents and subsequently correlated to actual damage types. It can be concluded from the empirical evidence that feature vectors are distinct to the type of damage. Results gathered from additional test on the progressive skin-stringer debonding of the same material to failure confirmed the uniqueness of the AE feature trends. An integrated system which is capable of both in-situ location of compromised sites and the diagnostic of flaw types in composite plate can potentially find engineering applications including the structural health monitoring of composite aircraft parts.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volume 558)
• Pages: 184-194
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.558.184
• Online since: June 2013
• Authors: Bizuayehu Y. Mohammed, Chee K. Tan, Steven J. Wilcox, Alex Z.S. Chong
• Keywords: Acoustic Emission (AE), Carbon Fibre Composites, Damage

References

[1] M Walz, The dream of composites, R&D, Features, Advantage Business Media, Vol.48(11) , December 2006, p.34,.

[2] Gabriel Oprisan, N.Taranu, Vlad Munteanu and Ioana Entuc, Application of modern polymeric composite materials in industrial construction, Buletnul Institutului Politehnic Din Iasi, Publicat de Universitatea Tehnica Tomul, LVI(LX), 2010.

[3] Dr. Ravi Deo, Dr. James H Starnes, Jr., Richard C. Holzwarth, Low-cost composite materials and structures for aircraft applications, Low Cost Composite Structures, 7-11 May 2001, Norway.

[4] AA Pollock, Loading and stress in acoustic emission, Materials and Evaluation, March 2004.

[5] W.H. Prosser, K.E. Jackson, S. Kellas, B.T. Smith, J.McKeon, A. Friedman, Advanced waveform based acoustic emission detection of matrix cracking in composites, Materials and Evaluation, Vol.53(9), September,1995, pp.1052-1058.

[6] M. Wevers, Listening the sound of materials: acoustic emission for the analysis of material behaviour, NDT &E International, Vol.30, No.2, 1997, pp.99-106.

DOI: 10.1016/s0963-8695(96)00051-5

[7] Jonathan J Scholey, Paul D. Wilcox, Michael R. Wisnom, Michael I. Friswell, Quantitative experimental measurements of matrix cracking and delamination using acoustic emission, Composites Part A 41, 2010,pp.612-623.

DOI: 10.1016/j.compositesa.2010.01.008

[8] Jonathan J Scholey, Paul D. Wilcox, C.K Lee, M. I. Friswell,M.R Wisnom, Acoustic emission in wide composite specimens, Advanced Materials Research, Vols 13-14(2006), pp.325-332.

DOI: 10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.13-14.325

[9] M. Surgeon, M. Wevers, Modal analysis of acoustic emission signals from CFRP laminates, NDT & E Internaltional 32 (1999), pp.311-322.

DOI: 10.1016/s0963-8695(98)00077-2

[10] M Eaton, M May, C Featherston, K Holford, S Hallet and R Pulliin, Charatersiation of damage in composite structures using acoustic emission, 9th International Conference on Damage Assessment of Structures (DAMAS 2011), Journal of Physics: Conference Series 305(2011) 012086.

DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/305/1/012086

[11] Peter J De Groot, A.M Peter, Wijnen & Roger B. F. Janssen, Real time frequency determination of acoustic emission for different fracture mechanisms in carbon/epoxy composites, Compsite Science and Technology 55(1995), pp.405-412

DOI: 10.1016/0266-3538(95)00121-2

[12] A.Bussida, M.Kupiec, S. Ifergane, R. Piat, T. Bohlke, Damage evolution and fracture events sequence in various composites by acoustic emission technique, Composites Science and Technology 68 (2008), pp.1144-1155.

DOI: 10.1016/j.compscitech.2007.08.032

[13] Dirk Aljets, A. Chong, S. Wilcox, K.Holford, Acoustic emission source location in plate-like structures using a closely arranged triangular sensor array, Proceedings of the European Conference on Acoustic-Emission Testing, Vienna, 2010.

DOI: 10.1016/j.ymssp.2012.01.012

[14] Zhongqing Su, Lin Ye, Ye Lu, Guided Lamb waves for identification of damage in composite structures: A review, Journal of Sound and Vibration 295(2006), pp.753-780.

DOI: 10.1016/j.jsv.2006.01.020