Acoustic emission study of effect of fiber weaving on properties of fiber-resin composite materials

Abstract

Failures of fiber-resin composite structures are closely related to the fiber weaving methods (FWM). The diversity of damage mechanisms of glass fiber-resin plastic (GFRP) composite materials resulting from various FWM is analyzed by an acoustic emission (AE) technique in this paper. Firstly, uniaxial tensile tests of three types of samples are carried out until failure with simultaneous recording of AE signals. Then, with the wavelet transform (WT) and fuzzy C-means (FCM) identification clustering, the analyzing outcomes display that AE parameters of diverse FWM specimens are variant. Furthermore, results illustrate that the fractures of axial fibers are delayed due to the interweaving effect of oblique fibers and the oblique fiber interweaving causes the shear force which changes the value of amplitude, ringing count, energy and duration. Lastly, finite element method (FEM) is implemented to confirm the capability of an AE-based approach to identify the damage of various fibrous layers. The conclusions from this study are also useful for developing high quality fiber-resin composite materials and further improving the accuracy of on-line monitoring of fiber-resin composite structural health.