Volume 21, Issue 2, 2012

Letter: USING DIGITAL IMAGE CORRELATION TECHNIQUES FOR DAMAGE DETECTION ON ADHESIVELY BONDED COMPOSITE REPAIRS.

M.A. Caminero¹*, S. Pavlopoulou², M. López-Pedrosa², B.G. Nicolaisson³, C. Pinna², C. Soutis²

¹Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales, Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, Campus Universitario s/n, 13071-Ciudad Real, Spain

²Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S1 3JD, United Kingdom

³Icelandair Technical Services, 235 Keflavik Airport, Iceland

*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: Email: miguelangel.caminero@uclm.es

ABSTRACT

The use of composite materials in aircraft industry has risen significantly in recent years. Bonded patch repair technologies provide an alternative to mechanically fastened repairs with significantly higher performance. In this work, the behaviour of scarf-type bonded patches in laminated composites are monitored using full-field measurement methods based on Digital Image Correlation (DIC) techniques which are validated against Lamb wave propagation analysis. The current work focuses on the performance and the on-line monitoring of the adhesively bonded patches in composite plates subjected to tensile loading.

Keywords:Composites, Digital Image Correlation, Damage Detection, Stress Concentration, Bonded Patch Repair, Scarf Repair.