Resonant loading of aircraft secondary structure plates for use with thermoelastic stress analysis and digital image correlation

Thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) is an established active thermographic approach which uses the thermoelastic effect to correlate the temperature change that occurs as a material is subjected to elastic cyclic loading to the sum of the principal stresses on the surface of the component. Digital image correlation (DIC) tracks features on the surface of a material to establish a displacement field of a component subjected to load, which can then be used to calculate the strain field. The application of both DIC and TSA on a composite plate representative of aircraft secondary structure subject to resonant frequency loading using a portable loading device, i.e. 'remote loading' is described. Laboratory based loading for TSA and DIC is typically imparted using a test machine, however in the current work a vibration loading system is used which is able to excite the component of interest at resonant frequency which enables TSA and DIC to be carried out. The accuracy of the measurements made under remote loading of both of the optical techniques applied is discussed. The data are compared to extract complimentary information from the two techniques. This work forms a step towards a combined strain based non-destructive evaluation procedure able to identify and quantify the effect of defects more fully, particularly when examining component performance in service applications.