Monitoring damage in holed CFRP laminates using embedded chirped FBG sensors

This study proposes a new approach to monitoring the damage process in holed CFRP laminates using an embedded chirped fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor. To this end, we experimentally and numerically investigated the damage process and the damage-induced changes in the spectrum shape. It was experimentally confirmed that multiple types of damage (e.g., splits, transverse cracks and delamination) appeared near a hole, and that the spectrum shape of the embedded chirped FBG sensor changed as the damage extended. Our proposed simulation for the reflection spectrum considering the damage agreed with the experiments. Furthermore, this study investigated the effect of each damage pattern oil the changes in the spectrum shape. Finally, based on these discussions, we present simple damage identifications with the embedded chirped FBG for the holed CFRP laminates under completely unloaded conditions. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.