| Popis: |
Abrupt impacts to solid laminate composite panels often produce internal damage that is not visible on the impacted surface. It is important that such damage be promptly detected since it can compromise the strength of composite structures. Ultrasonic C-scan imaging has been extensively used to detect and characterize impact damage using both pulse-echo and through-transmission methods. More recently developed guided wave imaging methods, such as sparse array imaging with baseline subtraction and wavefield imaging, have also been used to successfully detect damage in composite panels; however, their performance is generally not comparable to that achieved with bulk wave C-scans. For this study, various force impacts were used to create defect conditions ranging from barely detectable damage to extensive damage that was visible on the impact surface. Guided wave signals were recorded from an attached sparse transducer array before and after the impacts, and panels were scanned using both conventional ultrasonic C-scan methods and acoustic wavefield imaging. For each method, imaging results are presented and compared in terms of their ability to locate and characterize impact damage. |
