Acoustic Emission Analysis of Unidirectional Carbon Fiber Composite Plate

Acoustic emission (AE) is a typical technique for the study of various failure mechanisms of composite materials. However, such applications may be compromised due to the anisotropic nature of composite materials, where the acoustic signal velocity and attenuation depend on its traveling direction. This makes the correlation of the different failure modes to the recorded acoustic signals very difficult. In this paper, the influence of fiber orientation on AE signal was studied in unidirectional carbon fiber composite plate. Pencil lead breaks were used to introduce elastic waves. AE parameters such as counts, duration, energy, rise time and amplitude for aluminum and composite plate were analyzed in MS-Excel and results were compared to AE software. Good agreement was found between Excel and software on aluminum plate. Experiment on composite plate found that the most sensitive individual parameter to acoustic attenuation and fiber orientation (0°, 90°, 45°) is energy, and this sensitivity can be further improved if multiple parameters were combined together and evaluated as a whole. Acoustic velocities along various fiber directions were also theoretically studied and experimentally measured. Results showed that both velocity and AE parameters need to be used for signal analysis in AE inspection.

References
1. Miller, Ronnie K. and Eric v.K. Hill, tech. eds. and Patrick O. Moore, ed. Nondestructive Testing Handbook, third edition: Volume 6, Acoustic Emission Testing. Columbus, OH: The American Society for Nondestructive Testing, Inc. 2005. 2. Pollock, Adrian A. “Acoustic Emission Inspection,” ASM Handbook Volume 17, Nondestructive Evaluation and Quality Control, Materials Park, OH: ASM International. 1989. 3. Caprino, G., V. Lopresto, C. Leone and I. Papa. “Acoustic Emission Source Location in Unidirectional Carbon-Fiber- Reinforced Plastic Plates with Virtually Trained Artificial Neural Networks,” Journal of Applied Polymer Science, 122: 3506–3513. doi: 10.1002/app.34758. December 2011. 4. Lopresto, V., C. Leone, G. Caprino and I. De Iorio. “Analysis of acoustic emission signals produced by different carbon fibre reinforced plastic laminates,” Proc of 17th Int. Conference on Composite Materials-ICCM-17, Edinburgh-UK. 2009. 5. ASTM E976-05 Standard Guide for Determining the Reproducibility of Acoustic Emission Sensor Response, West Conshohocken, PA. 2005. 6. Wang, X., Hui-Ping and Xiong Yan. “Classification and Identification of Damage Mechanisms in Polyethylene Self- Reinforced Laminates by Acoustic Emission Technique,” Polymer Composites, Volume 32, Issue 6. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. June 2011.
Metrics
Usage Shares
Total Views
48 Page Views
Total Shares
0 Tweets
48
0 PDF Downloads
0
0 Facebook Shares
Total Usage
48