Application of ultrasonic guided waves for non-destructive testing of defective CFRP rods with multiple delaminations

One of the most important parts of gliders is a lightweight longeron reinforcement made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) rods. During manufacturing, in order to build the arbitrary spar profile, these small diameter (few millimetres) rods are glued together into epoxy filled matrix. Still, defects present in the rods, such as break of fibres, multiple delaminations due to lack of bonding and reduction in density affect construction strength markedly and are extremely complicated to eliminate. Therefore, appropriate non-destructive testing techniques intended for carbon fibre rods should be applied prior to gluing them together. The aim of the present paper is to analyse development possibilities of NDT technique based on application of ultrasonic guided waves and intended for CFRP rods that are used for aerospace applications and are defective with multiple delaminations. The regularities of ultrasonic guided wave propagation in a defective CFRP circular-shape rod with multiple delaminations have been investigated using 3D numerical simulations, finite difference and finite element models. The corresponding experiments have been conducted as well. Based on leaky wave suppression over a defective region due to the weak vertical component of particle displacements, the mechanism of guided wave interaction with the region of multiple delaminations is explained from the ultrasonic NDT viewpoint. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.