The application of thermoelastic stress analysis to evaluate debond damage in composite sandwich structures

Fruehmann, R.K., Wang, W., Dulieu-Barton, J.M. and Quinn, S. (2011) The application of thermoelastic stress analysis to evaluate debond damage in composite sandwich structures. Applied Mechanics and Materials, 70, 470-475. (doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.70.470).

Abstract

The work described in the paper investigates the stresses in the vicinity of a debond between the face sheet and core in a foam core / composite sandwich beam. Experiments were conducted in which the damaged side of the beam was loaded in compression in a four point bend test. Thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) was used to obtain a measure of the stress field in the central part of the beam to evaluate its potential for damage detection and assessment. It is shown that TSA is capable of both identifying the damage and assessing its severity in terms of the remnant load carrying capacity of the beam. A set of fatigue tests were also performed, which showed that the cyclic load applied as a necessity for TSA did not cause the damage to grow. Thereby demonstrating the potential of TSA as a non-destructive method for inspecting sandwich structures.

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Contributors

Author: S. Quinn

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