A High-Sensitivity Fusion Index for Delamination Identification of Composite Laminate Structures

Abstract

A significant obstacle that hinders the extensive application of large composite structures in the aerospace industry is the lack of valid identification methods for composite damage, where the delamination damage is the most common one. In this paper, a high-sensitivity fusion index (HSFI) is proposed for detecting, locating, and quantifying damages in aerospace polymer composite structures. The proposed fusion index is developed based on modern information fusion of three vibration-based indexes: modal strain, modal flexibility and static strain indexes. And its advantage is high sensitivity and strong noise immunity. By detecting the delamination damage in a composite laminate plate, it is verified that this fusion index is highly sensitive for delamination position and size in both cases of little and large damage in the presence of 2% level noise.