Defect Detection of Fiberglass Composite Laminates (FGCL) with Ultrasonic A-Scan Signal Measurement

Abstract

Fiberglass composite laminates are widely used in many industries, due to its advantages of high specific strength and high specific modulus. Invisible defect such as delamination and inclusion may cause composite structural failure. Therefore, several research on ultrasonic testing for composite material defect detection have been done for the past few years. However, improper parameter setup may lead to significant error to determine the behavior of defects. In this paper, the intensive study on defect detection with ultrasonic single crystal immersion transducer has been conducted. In general, the defects detection thru acquired signal is determine the behavior of defects through the certain ultrasonic parameter setup such as sound velocity, pulse width, gain, sampling rate and transducer distance with specimen surface. Furthermore, an A-scan signal interpretation for FGCL defect detection is demonstrated and illustrated. This research is focusing on for FGCL with maximum thickness up to 10 mm in ambient temperature. The result shows an appropriate ultrasonic parameter will result better signal interpretation analysis.