Structural Health Monitoring of Smart Composite Material by Acoustic Emission

Sahir Masmoudi , Abderrahim El Mahi (1) , Said Turki , Rachid El Guerjouma (1)

1 LAUM - Laboratoire d'Acoustique de l'Université du Mans

This paper presents a health monitoring study of composites incorporating integrated piezoelectric sensors. Firstly, experimental research is focused on examining the effects of the embedded sensors on the structural integrity of composites subjected to flexural loads. A series of specimens of composite with and without embedded piezoelectric sensors were fabricated in E-glass fibre/epoxy with a unidirectional play laminate. The composite specimens with sensors embedded in the mid-plane and without sensors were tested in three-point bending tests in static and creep loading while continuously monitoring the response by the acoustic emission (AE) technique. The AE signals were analysed using the classification k-means method in order to identify the different damages and to follow the evolution of these various mechanisms for both types of materials (with and without sensors). The static flexural tests indicate that the ultimate strength of the embedded composites is reduced, while the elastic modulus is not significantly affected. The acoustic emission analysis shows that the integration of the sensor presents advantages of the detection of the acoustic events.

Mots clés: Composite; CND intégré; émission acoustique; endommagement

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Sahir Masmoudi, Abderrahim El Mahi, Said Turki, Rachid El Guerjouma. Structural Health Monitoring of Smart Composite Material by Acoustic Emission. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810878⟩