COMP-HEALTH · Radio Frequency Sensing for Non-Destructive Testing of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Composite Materials for Structural Health Monitoring

It is well recognised that composites have a significant part to play in reducing the weight of many structural engineering components, given its superior strength-to-weight ratio. These features help on reducing energy requirements and enabling renewable energy generation through construction of light-weighing devices. Although the aerospace and renewable sectors are currently taking forward the advantages of these materials, in general there has been relatively limited wide-spread adoption of composite components mainly due to the primary failure mechanisms (i.e. delamination and fibre pull-out), which are difficult to accurately detect, leading to an underestimated lifetime of components and attempts at repair practically impossible.As the majority of the traditional visual inspection techniques are none-applicable, the CompHealth project will develop a technology that can allow for any delamination/pull-out to be detected in a composite component. This project will develop a mobile scanner which can be used to detect defects in composite materials and components, at both the point of manufacture and in-service/in-situ, with a reliability of >99%. The technique will use a novel radio frequency (RF) with remote sensing and improved scanning speed to detect defects in a range of fibre reinforced composite materials.