Published In
Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation
Document Type
Pre-Print
Publication Date
3-28-2016
Subjects
Tomography, Nanostructured materials, Nanotechnology
Abstract
This paper describes a novel non-destructive evaluation methodology for imaging of damage in composite materials using the electrical impedance tomography (EIT) technique applied to a distributed carbon nanotube-based sensor. The sensor consists of a nonwoven aramid fabric, which was first coated with nanotubes using a solution casting approach and then infused with epoxy resin through the vacuum assisted resin transfer molding technique. Finally, this composite sensor is cured to become a mechanically-robust, electromechanically-sensitive, and highly customizable distributed two-dimensional sensor which can be adhered to virtually any substrate. By assuming that damage on the sensor directly affects its conductivity, a difference imaging-based EIT algorithm was implemented and tailored to offer two-dimensional maps of conductivity changes, from which damage location and size can be estimated. The reconstruction is based on a newly defined adjacent current–voltage measurement scheme associated with 32 electrodes located along the boundary of the sensor. In this paper, we evaluate our methodology first by introducing well-defined damage where sections are either removed or narrow cuts are made on a series of sensor specimens. Finally, a more realistic damage scenario was investigated to show the capability of our methodology to detect impact damage on a composite laminate. The resulting EIT maps are compared to visual inspection and thermograms taken with an infrared camera.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1007/s10921-016-0341-0
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/18881
Citation Details
Published as: Dai, H., Gallo, G.J., Schumacher, T. et al. A Novel Methodology for Spatial Damage Detection and Imaging Using a Distributed Carbon Nanotube-Based Composite Sensor Combined with Electrical Impedance Tomography. J Nondestruct Eval 35, 26 (2016).
Description
This is the author’s version of a work. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document.