Major potential of composite materials relies in the nonlinear behavior triggered by their inhomogeneous nature. Particularly in heat diffusion, composite materials present a high variation of thermal properties as a function of temperature. Therefore, the spectrum of a propagating thermal wave can contain higher harmonics of the excitation frequency. The amplitude of these harmonics depends on the range of temperatures developed inside the material. This study is focused on the mathematical formulation of the relationship between thermal properties and temperature. To this end, the heat capacity and the thermal conductivity of Carbon/Epoxy and Glass/Epoxy cross-ply laminates were determined in a temperature range of interest for the aircraft industry using an ASTM method based on Modulated Temperature Differential Scanning Calorimetry. The results are indispensable toward a nonlinear treatment of heat diffusion phenomena and the respective exploitation for nondestructive testing.

Full-field dynamic shearography and laser Doppler vibrometric scanning are used to investigate the local contact acoustic nonlinear generation of delamination-induced effects on the vibration of a harmonically excited composite plate containing an artificial defect. Nonlinear elastic behavior caused by the stress-dependent boundary conditions at the delamination interfaces of a circular defect is also simulated by a 3-D second-order, finite-difference, staggered-grid model (displacement-stress formulation). Both the experimental and simulated data reveal an asymmetric motion of the layer above the delamination, which acts as a membrane vibrating with enhanced displacement amplitude around a finite offset displacement. The spectrum of the membrane motion is enriched with clapping-induced harmonics of the excitation frequency. In case of a sufficiently thin and soft membrane, the simulations reveal clear modal behavior at sub-harmonic frequencies caused by inelastic clapping.

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The feasibility of full field shearographic detection of nonclassical acoustic nonlinearity is investigated. Traditional frequency analysis of the sinusoidally excited sample, as used in scanning techniques, turns out to be not practical due to the inherent optical detection nonlinearity of the shearography system itself. An alternative method, based on determining the asymmetry between shearographic images stroboscopically obtained for positive and negative displacements, is proposed. This approach allows us to easily and rapidly detect the tension-compression asymmetry which typically arises where nonbounded contact interface defects are present.