A Multifunctional Composite Framework with Self-Healing and Guided Wave-Based States Awareness

Modern aeronautical engineering increasingly demands multifunctional materials that provide capabilities beyond passive load-bearing. While self-healing composites offer autonomous repair against impact damage, their practical application requires reliable in situ perception of structural states. Addressing this, this study proposes a novel multifunctional composite structural framework that synergistically integrates damage self-healing with guided wave-based structural health monitoring. Rather than treating monitoring and repair as isolated processes, this integrated strategy endows the composite with self-aware and self-healing characteristics, enabling closed-loop tracking of the dynamic “healthy–damaged–healed” processing. The interactive effects of simulated damage and various structural impact damaged states on distinct guided wave modes were systematically analyzed. Furthermore, a state index method is introduced to characterize damage propagation and accurately distinguish between evolving structural states. Experimental validations demonstrated spatial awareness: the framework achieved a minimum localization error of 5 mm for simulated damage. Crucially, for barely visible impact damage, the damaged and self-healing states were precisely localized with errors of 3 mm and 5 mm, respectively, with all overall localization errors strictly bounded below 9 mm. These findings validate the efficacy of the proposed multifunctional strategy, providing a highly reliable paradigm for the next generation of intelligent, damage-resilient aeronautical composite structures.