Quantification of fatigue state in CFRP using ultrasonic birefringence

Fiber reinforced plastics are widely used in high performance application areas such as aerospace, automotive and wind energy. They are preferred over classic materials such as metals because of their superior weight to stiffness ratio. When subjected to cyclic or static loading, micro-cracks develop and hence their stiffness degrades. The rate of stiffness degradation depends on the angle between the fibers and the applied load. Because commonly used fiber reinforced composites consist of multiple layers with different fiber directions to cope with different loads applied to the material, the stiffness degradation has to be analyzed for each fiber direction. One method to analyze the stiffness degradation in fiber reinforced materials is ultrasonic birefringence. A birefringent effect as it is known for light in optics is also observed for ultrasonic shear waves in fiber reinforced composites because of their elastic anisotropy. The role of the polarization dependent refractive index is taken by the propagation velocity of shear waves. If polarized parallel to the fiber direction they have a higher velocity than polarized perpendicularly to the fiber direction. The velocity depends on shear stiffness of the material. A model to predict the behavior of shear waves in multi-ply layups has been presented previously by Rheinfurth, Fey, Allinger and Busse[1]. That model was used to manually match measured and simulated phase and amplitude curves for waves that traversed the material under different angles between polarization direction of the emitting transducer and fiber direction in the first ply. Here another mode of interpreting the simulated results is used: amplitude and phase for each transducer orientation angle are combined to a complex number. Displaying them in the complex plane for one half rotation of the transducer yields an ellipse. Semi axis lengths and orientation can be obtained by Fourier transform and are used to compare the simulation to measured data.