LAMB WAVE TOMOGRAPHY OF ADVANCED COMPOSITE LAMINATES CONTAINING DAMAGE

Ultrasonic techniques have been used to image damaged regions in two p olymer composite plate samples. The two thin laminate samples studied consisted of 16 layers of carbon-fibre reinforced epoxy with a quasi-i sotropic lay-up configuration and had been previously loaded in a biax ial test method until failure. The resulting damage, in the form of fi bre failure, matrix cracking and delamination, has been imaged using a novel Lamb wave immersion tomography technique. Images created with t his method were correlated with images obtained from C-scan techniques . Both C-scans and Lamb wave tomography were able to identify clearly regions of damage in the two samples.