Active damage detection in filament wound composite tubes using built-in sensors and actuators

This paper presents a concept for active damage detection in a filament wound composite tube using a built-in diagnostic system. The proposed method uses piezoelectric transducers to generate and detect propagating stress waves. The diagnostic waves interact with structural defects and are scattered in all directions. These scattered waves carry information about the damage to the sensors. Extracting and interpreting this information is vital to the development of a robust structural health monitoring system. An experiment is described in which the location of damage is found by measuring the arrival times of the scattered waves. A method to estimate the size of the damage and the associated material degradation is also introduced.