Comparison of different approaches in characterization of impact defects of composite plates

Jingfei Liu , Nico Declercq

Composite plate materials are widely used in almost all branches of modern industries and everyday life. Characterization of impact defects of these composite plates is of great interest in the quality control and safety monitoring. A variety of nondestructive methods are available for this purpose; immersion (water-coupled) ultrasonic testing is one of them and is known for its high reliability and efficiency. In this paper, several immersion ultrasonic approaches are compared for their application to characterize impact damage of carbon/epoxy plates. Two sample plates with damage caused by controlled impact are tested. Three testing configurations are discussed and several time-domain and frequency-domain data processing methods are applied. The comparison of the results shows that with an optimized combination of testing configuration, transducer and frequency selection and data processing methods, the defects can be more accurately and easily characterized than conventional ways.

Mots clés: impact defect; immersion ultrasonic testing; composite plate; nondestructive evaluation

Domaines: Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Jingfei Liu, Nico Declercq. Comparison of different approaches in characterization of impact defects of composite plates. Acoustics 2012, Apr 2012, Nantes, France. ⟨hal-00810869⟩