Impact Damage Monitoring of Composite Materials Using Optical Fiber Sensors

Composite materials are widely used in aircraft manufacturing, and ensuring the safety and reliability of these materials is very important for flight safety. The barely visible impact damage (BVID) sustained by composite structures will pose significant safety hazards if not promptly detected. In this paper, a new method for damage detection of carbon fiber reinforced polymers (CFRP) during the impact process is proposed based on the interlayer strain changes and damage by using a stereo optic fiber sensor network embedded between composite interlayers. In this method, the strain field distribution change under the impact load is analyzed and the damage state could be judged by measuring the damage change according to the strain change.