Structural Health Monitoring of delaminated composite structures by the Boundary Element method

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) for composite materials is becoming a primary task due to their extended use in safety critical applications. Different methods, based on the use of piezoelectric transducers, strain memory alloys as well as of fibre optics, has been successfully proposed to detect and monitor damage in composite structural components with particular attention focused on delamination cracks. In the present paper a Structural Health Monitoring model based on the use of piezoelectric sensors, already proposed by the authors for isotropic damaged components, is extended to delaminated composite structures. The dynamic behavior of the host damaged structure and the bonded piezoelectric sensors is modeled by means of a boundary element approach based on the Dual Reciprocity BEM. The sensitivity of the piezoelectric sensors has been studied by varying the patch positioning with respect to the host structure as well as the delamination length and location. The electrical response of the piezoelectric sensor has been characterized by defining a damage index whose values have been related to the total Energy Release Rate and the phase angle Ψ.