Investigation of Plane Defects in Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers Using Digital Shearography

Shearography or Laser Interferometry is a novel NDE technique based on laser light that is used for the evaluation of defects in different materials. This method allows non-contact, full-field, and real-time measurement of the first derivative of surface displacement. There are three efficient parameters in shearography technique including loading size, shear distance, and its direction. Recently, composite structures due to their specific characteristics are widely used in aerospace, military and automotive industries, and other similar sensitive applications, so that leads to an increase in demanding the proper method of Non-destructive tests in order to the assurance of structure safety. In this work, the application of Digital shearography in the detection of composites defects is presented. For this purpose, Laser interferometry is employed to inspect several plane defects with different sizes and depths which are made on Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) samples. Also, the interaction of defects characteristics like size and depth on each important shearography parameter is investigated. The shearography results show its capability of defect detection in CFRP materials.

Keywords:

Shearography , Laser interferometry , CFRP , plane defects , NDT , defects detection.