Damage quantification using attenuation based signal processing for health monitoring in carbon fiber composites

Carbon-fiber composites will increasingly be used in next generation air transportation vehicles. Therefore, it is critical to develop state awareness models that can accurately capture the damage states and predict remaining useful life based on current and future loading conditions. In the current research, a structural health monitoring (SHM) and prognosis framework is being developed for heterogeneous material systems. The objective of this paper is to present some of the experimental components of this work. In the experiments preformed, the use of a pitch catch method using piezoelectric transducers for both the actuator and sensor were employed for collecting information on the damage status. The focus of this work is to quantify damage within the sample by relating parameters in the sensor signal to damage intensity. Good correlation has been observed in several tests between damage level and wave attenuation. These results are confirmed using off-the-shelf NDE techniques.