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Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation

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A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Advanced Materials Characterization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 February 2024) | Viewed by 8886

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Prof. Dr. Luís Miguel Pereira Durão

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Department of Mechanical Engineering, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Porto, Portugal
Interests: composites; machining; damage onset and propagation; damage assessment; image processing; non-destructive testing; mechanical testing
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Prof. Dr. Nuno Calçada Loureiro

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Department of Industrial Production Engineering, Instituto Superior de entre Douro e Vouga, Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal
Interests: biodegradable composites; green composites; mechanical characterization; production technologies; damage assessment; non-destructive techniques
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

After the stone, the bronze, and the iron ages, material history is now in the composites age. Thanks to their unique characteristics, composites are widely used in the production of parts for a large number of final products.

In the production process of composite parts, circular hole drilling may be necessary to allow their assembly and incorporation into complex sets, using screws, bolts, pins, rivets or snap springs. These operations are currently carried out by machining, as drilling is widely used. In the drilling process, delamination is the most frequent damage and can reduce the load-bearing capacity of the parts.

The optimization of drilling parameters, the development of specific tool geometries, and the consequences in terms of damage caused by machining have been extensively studied recently. However, there are still some open issues addressing damage extension assessment and the outcomes on load bearing capacity and fatigue behavior that deserve research and discussion.

This Special Issue is intended to act as a contributor to this discussion and to future developments on this theme.

The analysis of the damage propagation process in these materials and damage evaluation methods based on data extracted via image processing of holes machined in composites are of prime importance. Normally, the machined holes are analyzed by different NDT (Non-Destructive Testing) based on visual inspection, microscopy, digital enhanced radiography, ultrasound, active and passive thermography, laser shearography, and digital image correlation. The images resulting from the NDT are processed by diverse means to establish a numerical assessment of the damage. The use of NDTs and the correlation between damage extension and bearing load properties is a major driving theme that will be deeply discussed in this Special Issue.

It is our pleasure to invite you to submit a manuscript for this Special Issue. Full papers, communications, and reviews are all welcome.

Prof. Dr. Luís Miguel Pereira Durão
Dr. Nuno Calçada Loureiro
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

composites
machining
tool design
damage onset and propagation
image processing
NDT techniques
damage assessment
damage modeling
mechanical testing

Published Papers (10 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 7003 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Stability and Failure of Thin-Walled Composite Plate Elements with Asymmetric Configurations

by Katarzyna Falkowicz

Materials 2024, 17(9), 1943; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma17091943 - 23 Apr 2024

Viewed by 216

Abstract

In the present study, the stability and failure phenomena of thin-walled constructions subjected to axial compression, featuring a central cut-out, and constructed from composite materials were explored. These constructions were fabricated from a carbon–epoxy composite using the autoclave method. The research encompassed experimental assessments on actual specimens alongside numerical analyses employing the finite element approach within the ABAQUS^® software. The investigation spanned the entire load spectrum up to the point of structural failure, incorporating both practical trials and simulation analysis. During the practical assessments, the study monitored the post-buckling response and captured acoustic emissions to thoroughly evaluate the composite’s failure mechanisms. Additionally, the ARAMIS system’s non-invasive three-dimensional scanning was employed to assess deformations. Theoretical simulations utilized a step-by-step failure analysis, initiating with failure onset as per Hashin’s theory and proceeding to failure progression based on an energy criterion. The simulation outcomes, particularly concerning the critical and post-critical phases, were juxtaposed with empirical data to identify the composite’s vulnerability zones. The comparison underscored a significant concordance between the simulation predictions and the empirical findings. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation)

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12 pages, 6002 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Acoustic Emission and K-S Metric Entropy as Methods to Analyze the Influence of Gamma-Aluminum Oxide Nanopowder on the Destruction Process of GFRP Composite Materials

by Katarzyna Panasiuk, Krzysztof Dudzik, Grzegorz Hajdukiewicz and Norbert Abramczyk

Materials 2023, 16(23), 7334; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16237334 - 25 Nov 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 488

Abstract

Composites are materials that are widely used in industry, including yachting, railway and aviation. The properties of these materials can be modified by changing the type of reinforcement, the type of matrix, as well as the use of additives in the form of fillers and nanofillers that improve their mechanical or specific parameters. Due to the fact that these materials are often used for important structures, computational models using FEM tools may not be sufficient to determine the actual strength parameters, and what is more, to check them during operation. When designing structures made of composite materials, it is necessary to use high safety factors due to their behavior under several different types of loads, which is still difficult to determine precisely. This situation makes these structures much heavier and characterized by much higher strength properties than those that would actually be needed. In this article, the Kolmogorov-Sinai (K-S) metric entropy was used to determine the transition from the elastic to the viscoelastic state in GFRP (glass fiber reinforced polymer) composite materials without and with the addition of nanoaluminum, during a static tensile test. Additionally, the acoustic emission method was used during the research. This signal was further processed, and graphs were made of the number of events and the amplitude as a function of time. The obtained values were plotted on tensile graphs. The influence of the nano-filler on these parameters was also analyzed. The presented results show that it is possible to determine additional parameters affecting the strength of the structure for any composite materials. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation)

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15 pages, 3388 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental Study of Drilling Damage Outcomes in Hybrid Composites with Waste Micro-Inclusions

by Luis M. P. Durão, João E. Matos, João Alves, Sérgio Moni Ribeiro Filho, Túlio H. Panzera and Fabrizio Scarpa

Materials 2023, 16(23), 7325; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16237325 - 24 Nov 2023

Viewed by 670

Abstract

Composite materials are used in a substantial number of products. Environmental concerns highlight the need for the inclusion of recovered waste in their formulation, thus reducing their carbon footprint. These solutions raise the need to confirm the mechanical characteristics of these materials, avoiding unwanted failures. In this work, the authors present an experimental study on the drilling effects on fibrous–particulate hybrid composites made of glass/carbon fabrics and three different micro-inclusions: silica particles, recycled carbon fibre powder and cement. The mechanical features of the plates are confirmed by thrust force monitoring during drilling and by flexural testing. The range of results confirm the mechanical outcomes due to machining. The plates with monolithic carbon fabric or with carbon fabric plies in the outer plies returned higher mechanical characteristics. The plates with micro-inclusions had enhanced the flexural strength by 23% and 10%, in 40% and 60% fabric plates, respectively. The results demonstrate that the use of alternative formulations with micro-inclusions from recovered waste can contribute both to the reduction of the mechanical degradation of drilled hybrid composites and to environmental purposes by avoiding the increase in landfill waste. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation)

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28 pages, 26821 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Damage Detection in a Polymer Matrix Composite from 4D Displacement Field Measurements

by Ana Mandić, Viktor Kosin, Clément Jailin, Zvonimir Tomičević, Benjamin Smaniotto and François Hild

Materials 2023, 16(18), 6300; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16186300 - 20 Sep 2023

Viewed by 677

Abstract

Standard Digital Volume Correlation (DVC) approaches enable quantitative analyses of specimen deformation to be performed by measuring displacement fields between discrete states. Such frameworks are thus limited by the number of scans (due to acquisition duration). Considering only one projection per loading step, Projection-based Digital Volume Correlation (P-DVC) allows 4D (i.e., space and time) full-field measurements to be carried out over entire loading histories. The sought displacement field is decomposed over a basis of separated variables, namely, temporal and spatial modes. In the present work, the spatial modes are constructed via scan-wise DVC, and only the temporal amplitudes are sought via P-DVC. The proposed method is applied to a glass fiber mat reinforced polymer specimen containing a machined notch, subjected to in situ cyclic tension and imaged via X-ray Computed Tomography. The P-DVC enhanced DVC method employed herein enables for the quantification of damage growth over the entire loading history up to failure. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation)

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15 pages, 9085 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Micro-Scale Numerical Simulation of Fatigue Failure for CFRP Subjected to Multiple-Amplitude Cyclic Loadings Based on Entropy Damage Criterion

by Huachao Deng, Keitaro Toda, Mio Sato and Jun Koyanagi

Materials 2023, 16(18), 6120; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16186120 - 07 Sep 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 659

Abstract

Fatigue failure of carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRPs) under cyclic loadings has attracted the attention of researchers recently. In this study, the entropy-based failure criterion is proposed to investigate the fatigue lifetime of unidirectional CFRPs subjected to multiple-amplitude cyclic loadings. Due to the heterogeneity of CFRPs, a micro-finite element model considering matrix resin and fibers independently is developed, and the entropy-based damage criterion is implemented into a user-subroutine of Abaqus to model the progressive damage of matrix resin. The fatigue lifetime of CFRPs under typical loading sequences consisting of two stages, such as varying from low to high (L-H) or from high to low (H-L) loading sequence, is estimated with the proposed failure criterion. Numerical results show that the initial damage occurs near the area between two fibers, and a transverse crack propagates progressively under the cyclic loading. The difference in predicted lifetime to final failure in L-H and H-L stress levels is 6.3%. Thus, the effect of loading sequence on the fatigue lifetime can be revealed via the proposed entropy-based damage criterion. Comparisons with the conventional linear cumulative damage (LCD) and kinetic crack growth (KCG) theories are also conducted to demonstrate the validity of the proposed method. The entropy-based failure criterion is a promising method to predict the residual strength and fatigue lifetime of CFRP components. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation)

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22 pages, 8779 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Damage Assessment of Glass-Fibre-Reinforced Plastic Structures under Quasi-Static Indentation with Acoustic Emission

by Norman Osa-uwagboe, Amadi Gabriel Udu, Vadim V. Silberschmidt, Konstantinos P. Baxevanakis and Emrah Demirci

Materials 2023, 16(14), 5036; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16145036 - 17 Jul 2023

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1222

Abstract

The use of fibre-reinforced plastics (FRPs) in various industrial applications continues to increase thanks to their good strength-to-weight ratio and impact resistance, as well as the high strength that provides engineers with advanced options for the design of modern structures subjected to a variety of out-of-plane impacts. An assessment of the damage morphology under such conditions using non-destructive techniques could provide useful data for material design and optimisation. This study investigated the damage mechanism and energy-absorption characteristics of E-glass laminates and sandwich structures with GFRP face sheets with PVC cores under quasi-static indentation with conical, square, and hemispherical indenters. An acoustic emission (AE) technique, coupled with a k-means++ pattern-recognition algorithm, was employed to identify the dominant microscopic and macroscopic damage mechanisms. Additionally, a post-mortem damage assessment was performed with X-ray micro computed tomography and scanning electron microscopy to validate the identified clusters. It was found that the specific energy absorption after impact with the square and hemispherical indenters of the GFRP sandwich and the plain laminate differed significantly, by 19.29% and 43.33%, respectively, while a minimal difference of 3.5% was recorded for the conical indenter. Additionally, the results obtained with the clustering technique applied to the acoustic emission signals detected the main damaged modes, such as matrix cracking, fibre/matrix debonding, delamination, the debonding of face sheets/core, and core failure. The results therefore could provide a methodology for the optimisation and prediction of damage for the health monitoring of composites. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation)

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12 pages, 5570 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Edgewise Compression and Three-Point Bending Analyses of Repaired Composite Sandwich Panels

by Ricardo J. B. Rocha, Marcelo F. S. F. de Moura and Raul D. F. Moreira

Materials 2023, 16(12), 4249; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16124249 - 08 Jun 2023

Viewed by 1036

Abstract

In this work, the fracture behaviour of repaired honeycomb/carbon–epoxy sandwich panels under edgewise compression and three-point bending loading was analysed. Assuming the occurrence of damage resulting from a complete perforation leading to an open hole, the followed repair strategy consists of plug filling the core hole and considering two scarf patches with an angle of 10° in order to repair the damaged skins. Experimental tests were performed on undamaged and repaired situations in order to address the alteration in the failure modes and assess the repair efficiency. It was observed that repair recovers a large part of the mechanical properties of the corresponding undamaged case. Additionally, a three-dimensional finite element analysis incorporating a mixed-mode I + II + III cohesive zone model was performed for the repaired cases. Cohesive elements were considered in the several critical regions prone to damage development. The failure modes and the resultant load–displacement curves obtained numerically were compared with the experimental ones. It was concluded that the numerical model is suitable for estimating the fracture behaviour of sandwich panel repairs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation)

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14 pages, 3085 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Damage Propagation by Cyclic Loading in Drilled Carbon/Epoxy Plates

by Luis M. P. Durão, João E. Matos, Nuno C. Loureiro, José L. Esteves and Susana C. F. Fernandes

Materials 2023, 16(7), 2688; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16072688 - 28 Mar 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1054

Abstract

Fiber reinforced composites are widely used in the production of parts for load bearing structures. It is generally recognized that composites can be affected both by monotonic and cyclic loading. For assembly purposes, drilling is needed, but holes can act as stress concentration notches, leading to damage propagation and failure. In this work, a batch of carbon/epoxy plates is drilled by different drill geometries, while thrust force is monitored and the hole’s surrounding region is inspected. Based on radiographic images, the area and other features of the damaged region are computed for damage assessment. Finally, the specimens are subjected to Bearing Fatigue tests. Cyclic loading causes ovality of the holes and the loss of nearly 10% of the bearing net strength. These results can help to establish an association between the damaged region and the material’s fatigue resistance, as larger damage extension and deformation by cyclic stress contribute to the loss of load carrying capacity of parts. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation)

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19 pages, 5810 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Predicting Failure of Additively Manufactured Specimens with Holes

by Gina Eileen Chiara Schmeier, Clara Tröger, Young W. Kwon and Delf Sachau

Materials 2023, 16(6), 2293; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16062293 - 13 Mar 2023

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 884

Abstract

Experimental and computational studies were conducted to predict failure loads of specimens containing different-sized holes made using the additive manufacturing (AM) technique. Two different types of test specimens were prepared. Flat specimens, manufactured from polylactic acid (PLA), were subjected to uniaxial loading. Tubular specimens, made of polycarbonate (PC), were subjected to combined loading that was applied using uniaxial testing equipment. Test specimens were uniquely designed and printed to apply the combined bending and torsional loads to tubular specimens. A newly developed failure theory was applied to predict the loads that would result in the fracture of these test specimens. This theory is composed of two conditions related to stress and the stress gradient to be simultaneously satisfied to predict failure. The failure loads predicted using the new failure criteria were compared closely with the experimental data for all test specimens. In addition, a semi-empirical equation was developed to predict the critical failure surface energy for different printing angles. The critical failure surface energy is a material property and is used for the stress gradient condition. Using the semi-empirically determined values for the failure criterion provided close agreement with experimental results. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation)

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11 pages, 3985 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Interfacial Shear Strength of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes-Cement Composites from Molecular Dynamics and Finite Element Studies

by Carlos Talayero, Isabel Lado-Touriño, Omar Aït-Salem, Ismael Sánchez Ramos, Alicia Páez-Pavón and Rosario G. Merodio-Perea

Materials 2023, 16(5), 1992; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma16051992 - 28 Feb 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1190

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are nanometer-sized structures that can be used to reinforce cement matrices. The extent to which the mechanical properties are improved depends on the interfacial characteristics of the resulting materials, that is, on the interactions established between the CNTs and the cement. The experimental characterization of these interfaces is still impeded by technical limitations. The use of simulation methods has a great potential to give information about systems lacking experimental information. In this work, molecular dynamics (MD) and molecular mechanics (MM) were used in conjunction with finite element simulations to study the interfacial shear strength (ISS) of a structure formed by a pristine single-walled CNT (SWCNT) inserted in a tobermorite crystal. The results show that, for a constant SWCNT length, ISS values increase when the SWCNT radius increases, while for a constant SWCNT radius, shorter lengths enhance ISS values. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Damage Analysis for Composite Materials: Methods, Testing and Evaluation)

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