Research advances in eddy current testing for maintenance of carbon fiber reinforced plastic composites

This paper presents the overview of previous studies on the eddy current testing of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) composites. CFRP is composed of many unidirectional carbon fiber/epoxy plies stacked together, thus it has laminated structure and inhomogeneous nature. Eddy Current Testing (ECT) is an efficient and non-contact Nondestructive Testing (NDT) technique for conductive materials. The electrical conductivity of carbon fibers can be utilized by ECT system for fiber texture mapping and detection of defects that can cause the conductivity change. Recently a lot of attention has been paid to the electromagnetic properties characterization of CFRP material, fiber texture and defect detection, as well as the ECT technique enhancement. In this paper we will give the detailed information and results of these research works. In addition this paper also summarizes the available numerical simulation methods for the electromagnetic modeling of CFRP materials, and the calculation of eddy currents and ECT signals.