Abstract:
Polymer composites like epoxy are widely used in high
performance engineering applications requiring electrical
insulation and/or mechanical strength and resistance to cyclic
stresses. Over time, multi-stress aging can result in progressive
degradation of the polymer. The current work studies the
possibility of damage detection in epoxy through electrical
resistance tomography. In electrical resistance tomography
(ERT), current is injected at known points in the sample, and the
resultant potential difference between given points is measured.
For this purpose, an array of electrodes is placed along the
boundary of the sample. Further, this technique requires the
conductivity of the polymer to be increased to measurable values,
and this is done by incorporating carbon-reinforced fibers into
the matrix to form a Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP).
A finite element method (FEM) based model is developed to
model the electrical resistance tomography measurements in
epoxy-based CFRP in the presence of simulated defects. The ERT
measurements are observed to be sensitive to the presence of
defects.
