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The aim of this study is to understand the thermal phenomenon of unidirectional Glass Fibre Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) composite under static and fatigue (tensile) loads. This study used a rectangular shaped GFRP composite and consisted of specimens with and without a circular notch. Under static test, the constant displacement rate was applied. Under fatigue test, frequency and amplitude of stress were explored to study the fatigue properties and damage evolution of the specimen. Thermography was used in real-time observation to obtain the temperature profile on the external surface of the specimens. This experimental method showed that the thermal phenomenon gave a good detection of the damage appearance of GFRP material under static loading. Moreover, thermal phenomenon gave a good correlation with the energy dissipation under fatigue loading. Thermal phenomenon successfully determined the high cycle fatigue strength of GFRP composite. This study concluded that thermal phenomenon observed by Infra-Red (IR) camera has successfully demonstrated the damage propagation and the strength behaviour of GFRP composite due to tensile loading in both static and fatigue conditions. The IR camera can then be used to determine the damage evolution and the strength prediction based on the thermal phenomenon on the external surface of the GFRP composite.

This work presents an experimental study to monitor the damage propagation of composite material by non destructive testing (NDT) method. In order to achieve this, an open hole condition of glass fiber/epoxy composite has been used as the specimen test under static tensile loading and observed using two different real-time monitoring techniques of NDT namely infra-red (IR) camera and supported by Acoustic Emission. The results show that the thermal response and acoustic emission signals give a good detection on damage appearance and damage propagation of glass fiber/epoxy composite under static tensile loading conditions.

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