Monitoring of failure of composite laminates using acoustic emission

Abstract

Acoustic emission (AE) is suitable for monitoring the evolution of degradation in structural components as well as for localizing damage. In the present study acoustic emission is employed for the location and identi fi cation of the service induced damage in cross ply laminates. The sequence of the different failure mechanisms, i.e. transverse matrix cracking and the subsequent delamina-tion propagation at the 0°/90° interface is followed closely by advanced indices which quantify the attributes of the received AE waveforms. The AE activity can be successfully correlated to the damage accumulation of the cross ply laminates, while speci fi c acoustic emission indices proved sensitive to the various modes that evolve during loading. © RILEM 2013.