Damage Assessment in Composite Structures Based on Acousto-Ultrasonics—Evaluation of Performance

This work focuses on the damage detection and assessment of barely visible impact damages that occur after impacting a composite stiffened structure through the acousto-ultrasonics technique. Delaminations and debondings have been introduced in two stiffened panels and afterwards interrogated with an integrated structural health monitoring (SHM) network within the project. In order to perform the damage assessment, a methodology for the identification of damages along with a graphical user interface is developed. The performance of the developed methodology is evaluated and a damage assessment based on several damage indices and actuation frequencies is carried out. The most suitable parameters for the given structure and damage types are finally reported.