In situ self-sensing fibre reinforced composites

This paper discusses the development of a novel composite system in which some of the reinforcing fibres act as the light guide. The reinforcing fibre light guide was made by applying an appropriate cladding material onto commercially available 9 m diameter silica fibres. The resultant light guide was termed a `self-sensing' fibre. The self-sensing fibres were embedded within a 16-ply carbon fibre reinforced epoxy prepreg system and cured to produce a composite panel. The composite panels were impact tested to investigate the feasibility of using the self-sensing fibres as an impact damage sensor system. Similarly, three types of conventional optical fibre, with outer diameters of 30, 50 and 125 m respectively, were also embedded within composite panels. The results indicated that the self-sensing fibres were capable of detecting impact damage as low as 2 J for impacts carried out using a 20 mm hemispherical tup. The self-sensing fibres proved more sensitive to impact damage than the conventional optical fibres used in this study.