Low-Cost System to Evaluate Impact Localization in Composite Plates

Abstract

The development of composite materials has been following a growing trend, with its use ranging from sporting goods to construction materials and defense. The aerospace industry in particular has observed a minute increase in demand for these materials, since the associated weight reductions promise significant savings in fuel related costs. Composite materials, however, are prone to important and very specific failure modes which are invisible to the naked eye (e.g., delaminations, fiber ruptures, debondings) and occur in response to everyday events such as impacts. Thus, usage of these materials in critical areas of airplanes (e.g. wings and fuselage) is subject to the development of technologies able to continuously and precisely monitor existence, type and extent of failures. Impact localization plays a key role within this paradigm allowing identification of hot spots, that is, areas subjected to potentially damaging phenomena, for further analysis. Several such techniques have already been developed, but anisotropy, precision, robustness and cost are common drawbacks amongst their implementation. The present study was directed to the use of conditioned piezoelectric sensors along with low cost commercial off-the shelf data acquisition system to implement a reliable impact localization method.