Infra-Red Thermography based Inspection of Hybrid Composite Laminates under Flexure Loading

Abstract

Generally, the aircraft structural parts are economically high in cost so the materials need to be inspected for defects or damages using various non-destructive testing (NDT) methods like ultrasonic, thermography and acoustic emission. The aim of this project is to characterize the defects in composite laminates before and after the flexural loading using infra-red thermography NDT method. GFRP and hybrid (GFRP+CFRP) composite laminates are fabricated with different orientation such as uni-directional, cross ply, anti-symmetric and angle ply and then tested under flexural loading according to ASTM D790 standard. The volume fraction of the fibre and matrix needs to be found out to know the void content and the mixing ratio of reinforcement and binder.