Tuesday  |  Salon 9  |  02:00 PM–02:20 PM

#15642, Real-time Fatigue Damage Prediction of CFRP Elements by Means of Thermographic and Electrical Resistance Measurements

The prediction of fatigue damage for structural components subjected to fatigue is a complex issue and the development of non-destructive monitoring approaches in real-time becomes an important goal to pursue.
In the present study, thermographic and electrical resistance measurements were performed to detect damage on a batch of aeronautical manufacturing specimens in CFRP at different stress levels. The aim of the research is to combine the different information provided by electrical resistance and thermographic techniques to study the evolution of damage and to predict fatigue life of composites in rapid and effective way.
The electrical voltage signal was recorded in continuous mode without interrupting the test to monitor fatigue damage. The effect of the change in resistance due to the thermal increase caused by the cyclic load and the Joule effect, which constitutes noise for the experimental setup, was also eliminated.
The processing of the raw data showed an interesting increase in electrical resistance in the different phases of the fatigue life due to an irreversible change in the material caused by the fatigue damage evolution. Before the sudden failure, the resistance values increase rapidly in the phases of propagation of the delamination. The latter behavior was consistent with the reduction in stiffness obtained by processing the fatigue data of the tested samples.
Electrical resistance measurements have been compared to thermographic measurements to study the possible correlations between thermal and electrical features in detecting the fatigue behaviour.

Andrea Saponaro   University of Salento
Rosa De Finis   University of Salento
Alessandra Pirinu   University of Salento
Davide Palumbo   Politecnico di Bari
Umberto Galietti   Politecnico di Bari
Francesco Panella   Università del Salento
Riccardo Nobile   Università del Salento