Detecting Low Velocity Impact Damage in Composite Plate Using Nonlinear Acoustic/Ultrasound Methods

The objective of this work was to image the presence of impact damage by monitoring the nonlinear response of damaged carbon/epoxy composite samples. The presence of microcracks, debonding, delamination, etc… induce the material to behave in a nonlinear elastic fashion highlighted by the presence and amplitude of harmonics in the spectrum of the received signal when the sample is periodically excited at one of its resonance frequencies. The sensitivity of a second harmonic imaging technique (SEHIT) based on material nonlinear elastic effect known as second harmonic generation (SHG) was investigated. The proposed imaging process was used to detect barely visible impact damage (BVID) due to low velocity impact (<12 J). The results showed that the SEHIT methods appear to be highly accurate in assessing the presence and magnitude of damage with a very promising future for both NDT and possibly structural health monitoring (SHM) applications. Moreover the technique was validated with two conventional NDT techniques: pulse thermography and thermosonics. The first NDT method failed in detecting the damage on the impacted face. The second technique was capable of localising and quantifying the damage on the impacted surface agreeing well with the results obtained using the proposed nonlinear imaging method.