Monday  |  Carnegie III  |  02:50 PM–03:10 PM

#13903, Full-field Imaging Approaches for the Assessment of Composite Structures

Imaging techniques have the potential to revolutionise our approach to engineering design, offering new insight into material and larger system behaviour over a range of length and time scales. The recent relative reduction in cost of the camera systems and increased processing power to handle images, provides the opportunity for the techniques to be deployed at larger scales and realised industrially. A novel integrated imaging and loading system is being commissioned, known as Structures 2025, funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Structures 2025 comprises a reconfigurable system, which can be used for the testing and assessment of a wide range of structures, under both static and fatigue loading. It has the potential to revolutionise traditional approaches to structural testing, certification and validation by providing high-fidelity measurements in a realistic composite structure. A demonstrator has been designed based on an idealised section of a WTB (Wind Turbine Blade) composite structure. Key design stress components in representative combined load cases are applied to the WTB section using three servo-hydraulic actuators mounted in specifically configured rigs installed on a strong floor. Digital Image Correlation (DIC) and Thermoelastic Stress Analysis (TSA) are used simultaneously to obtain full-field strain and stress data from the WTB section. The experimental data is fused and compared to finite element analysis of the WTB section to demonstrate a novel full-field data fusion procedure on a complex composite structure.

Jack Callaghan   University of Southampton
Duncan Crump   University of Southampton
Anette Nielsen   Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy
Ole Thomsen   University of Bristol
Janice Barton   University of Bristol