Abstract
Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of composite structures leads to greater safety during operation and reduces the cost of regular inspections. Impact damage detection is an important SHM task. Since impact damage can significantly reduce the lifetime of composite structures, sensors for impact damage are of great interest. Carbon Fiber Sensors (CFSs) can be used to detect composite damage. CFSs are lightweight and compact, and they can be integrated during the manufacturing process. In our study, CFSs were manufactured from three types of carbon fiber tows and were integrated into different layers of the lay-up in order to investigate the influence on impact damage detection. The effect of mechanical loading and temperature change on the measured electrical resistance was investigated during cyclic flexural tests. It was revealed that, it is possible to distinguish between changes in measured signals due to impact and due mechanical loading. The change in the measured electrical signal caused by temperature can be eliminated. CFSs can be used for impact damage detection of a glass fabric composite. A combination of thermography and CFSs as an active heating element also provides good results in the field of impact damage detection
Highlights
Applications of composite materials are nowadays spreading from the aircraft and marine industry to the manufacturing industry and sports equipment
Since impact damage can significantly reduce the lifetime of composite structures, sensors for impact damage are of great interest
Carbon Fiber Sensors (CFSs) were manufactured from three types of carbon fiber tows and were integrated into different layers of the lay-up in order to investigate the influence on impact damage detection
Summary
Applications of composite materials are nowadays spreading from the aircraft and marine industry to the manufacturing industry and sports equipment. There are two different approaches to the inspection of impact damage to composite materials in-situ. We present an investigation of impact damage detection using Carbon Fiber Sensors (CFSs). Compared to other SHM methods CFS detects damages along the sensor fiber. This method has a high potential to be used for impact loaded leading edges, etc. Müller et al used CFS to detect microcracking along the length of the fiber, which was wrapped around pressure vessels [26] An advantage of this type of sensor is the possibility to integrate the sensor into the material during manufacturing. The T300 1000-50A PAN tow that was chosen had already been used for another comparative study and for various sensing applications [23,24,25,26,27]
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