Nonlinear lamb wave imaging method for testing Barely Visible Impact Damage of CFRP laminates

Abstract

The traditional linear ultrasonic technique may not provide a clear indication of the underlying damage in some cases of invisible or barely-visible impact damage. Considering nonlinear ultrasonic methods have been used for the detection of defects such as closed crack or delamination, a new nonlinear Lamb wave imaging method for detecting the Barely Visible Impact Damage (BVID) of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) laminates was proposed in this work. First, the testing platform of nonlinear Lamb wave was built, and the test specimen with different impact damages was prepared. Second, the Lamb wave modes that meet the requirements of nonlinear testing were excited, and then, the correlation between the relative non-linear coefficient and status of low-energy impact damage were investigated. Lastly, the scanning imaging methods were developed, and the Damage Index (DI) for imaging impact damage was defined. The research results indicated that the DI based on the relative non-linear coefficient has higher detection sensitivity for low-energy impact damage, and the BVID and the extension of macro damage can be displayed intuitively by use of the new nonlinear Lamb wave imaging method.