No abstract

The future United States military arsenal is transitioning from homogeneous metallic materials to stronger and lighter heterogeneous composite materials. Although these composites offer numerous advantages such as the ability to tune strength to weight ratios for each particular application, composites are susceptible to numerous damage mechanisms and environmental factors. Accidental in-field impacts resulting from mishandling or transportation loads have been identified by the U.S. Army as the primary cause of damage in composite weapon systems. This paper presents a hybrid approach to detect, locate, and quantify damage in filament wound canisters using a complementary set of vibration-based (transmissibility and embedded sensitivity) and wave propagation-based (phased array beamforming) methods. It is shown that this hybrid approach accurately detects, locates, and quantifies the damage imposed by 1.36 and 6.78 N-m impact energies. By measuring the static stiffness of the baseline canister at the mid-point, it was determined that the 1.36 N-m impact resulted in an overall 6% reduction of the tubes bending stiffness, while the 6.78 N-m impact resulted in a 28% reduction.