Use of acoustic emission to identify damage modes in glass fibre reinforced polyester

The purpose of this work is the use of acoustic emission signal parameters to identify and characterise the various damage mechanisms in stressed glass fibre reinforced polymer composite. Data from acoustic emission are used as inputs in a Kohonen self-organising map which automatically separate the acoustic emission signals, enabling a correlation with the failure mode. These results open perspectives for real-time damage recognition in complex composite materials. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.