Development of a New Temporary Attachment Technique for Detecting Debonding of a Composite Structure Using Impedance Based Non-Destructive Testing Method

To date, the application of composite materials has been used throughout the globe due to its advantages, such as corrosion resistance, high strength, design flexibility, and light weight. However, the joining of composite materials is usually achieved with adhesives, where debonding of parts can cause unexpected failure. Thus, detecting and locating defects due to impact or fatigue stresses at an early stage is crucial to ensure safety. Various non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques have been used to detect defects in composite structures, where this study proposes an improved approach of using one of the NDT techniques to detect and locate debonding of glass fiber epoxy plates. Here, the electromechanical impedance (EMI) technique is used with a new way of detecting defects using a movable device. This idea could reduce the overall cost of the monitoring system as the conventional EMI technique requires one to permanently attach a large number of piezoelectric transducers when monitoring large structures. The performance of the proposed idea is tested against another temporary attachment method to investigate the possibility of using the new idea for monitoring debonding in composite structures.