Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Multiple Low-Velocity Impact Damages in a Glass Fibered Composite Structure

Glass fiber-reinforced polymer structures (GFRPS) are widely used in civil and mechanical fields due to their light weight and corrosion resistance. However, these structures are prone to damage with very-low-energy impacts. The reliability of such structures is of prime importance before their installation and usage. This study aimed to identify, visualize, localize, and verify multiple barely visible impact damage (BVID) in a GFRPS using a combination of guided waves (GW)-based online structural health monitoring (SHM) and thermal strain-based nondestructive testing (NDT) approaches. Global NDT techniques like the use of a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) and digital image correlation (DIC) were used in the experimental analysis. The effectiveness of the experimental LDV-GW process was also checked numerically with the spectral element method (SEM). A threshold-based baseline free SHM approach to effectively localize the damages was proposed along with quick DIC verification of composite structure with thermal loading based on short-pulse heating as an excitation source. This study analyzed combined experimental- and numerical-based SHM-NDT methods in characterizing the multiple BVIDs located in a GFRPS.