Designing ferrite impregnated epoxy actuators for impact damage detection in carbon fibre reinforced composites

Abstract

Carbon fibre reinforced polymers composites possess properties that outstrip their component parts, and are seeing increased adoption in sectors such as the aerospace industry. Due to their complex failure mechanisms, it is necessary to have structural health monitoring (SHM) in place. Previous work has shown the efficacy of magnetostrictive materials as damage detection actuators; issues such as their spatial sensitivity require improvement to progress their applicability in SHM. Another requirement is to demonstrate ease-of-fabrication in conjunction to damage detectability, and also to maintain a good weight-to-cost trade-off. In this paper we demonstrate a step-by-step approach to the fabrication and optimisation of an impregnated magnetostrictive epoxy matrix that aims to satisfy these requirements.

Metadata

Authors/Creators:

Surakarnkha, J.
Zhaoyuan, L.
Gong, P.
Holmes, W.
Desai, P.
Foreman, J. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7521-990X
Morley, N. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7284-7978

© 2021 Elsevier. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Composites Science and Technology. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords:

Polymer-matrix composites (PMCs); Flexible composites; Sensing; Scanning electron microscopy (SEM); Magnetostrictive

Dates: