Damage assessment of carbon fibre reinforced plastic using acoustic emission technique: experimental and numerical approach

In this research work, the acoustic emission results obtained from testing double cantilever beam specimens with carbon fibre reinforced plastic laminates are analysed. The acoustic emission descriptors such as amplitude, frequency centroid, counts, duration and risetime are clustered using k-means++ algorithm. An unconventional and innovative way of using the acoustic emission descriptors, after the clustering, is introduced. This method can favourably be used for relating the different damage progression modes in fibre reinforced plastics. Apart from this, the cumulative acoustic energy is used for predicting the crack length of the specimens. The predicted crack length is almost identical to the actual crack length opening recorded in each specimen. Finally, analytical and finite element models are used for validating the experimental results under the mode I delamination. The finite element studies are carried out using cohesive zone modelling in Comsol Multiphysics® platform.