Damage recognition of glass fiber composite bi-directional corrugated sandwich cylindrical panels via non-contacted vibration method

It has always been one of the important issues and challenges of current concern on the damage identification of fiber-reinforced composite sandwich structures. In this work, a damage index based on the modal flexibility curvature change rate (MFCCR) method considering the effect of curvature is proposed to study the damage recognition of glass fiber composite bi-directional corrugated sandwich cylindrical panels (BCSCPs). A series of composite BCSCPs without and with different kinds of defects is designed and fabricated. A non-contacted vibration experiment is carried out to investigate the modal characteristics of the specimens with different configurations. Numerical structural parametric analyses are also conducted to verify the feasibility of the present damage recognition method. It is found that the position of the defect can be successfully detected by using the MFCCR damage index focus on the sensitive area, and can be applied for more than one damage position existing on the models. Some conclusions are given, which can provide references for damage identification of such complex structures.

Automated summary

This study proposes a damage recognition method based on the modal flexibility curvature change rate for glass fiber composite bi-directional corrugated sandwich cylindrical panels. Experimental and numerical analysis results demonstrate that this method can successfully detect the position of defects, even in complex structures with multiple damage locations.