Acoustic Emission Detection and Prediction of Fatigue Crack Propagation in Composite Patch Repairs Using Neural Networks
Abstract
An aircraft is subjected to severe structural and aerodynamic loads during its service life. These loads can cause damage or weakening of the structure especially for aging military and civilian aircraft, thereby affecting its load carrying capabilities. Hence composite patch repairs are increasingly used to repair damaged aircraft metallic structures to restore its structural efficiency. This paper presents the results of Acoustic Emission (AE) monitoring of crack propagation in 2024-T3 Clad aluminum panels repaired with adhesively bonded octagonal, single sided boron/epoxy composite patch under tension-tension fatigue loading. Crack propagation gages were used to monitor crack initiation. The identified AE sensor features were used to train neural networks for predicting crack length. The results show that AE events are correlated with crack propagation. AE system was able to detect crack propagation even at high noise condition of 10 Hz loading; that crack propagation signals can be differentiated from matrix cracking signals that take place due to fiber breakage in the composite patch. Three back-propagation cascade feed forward networks were trained to predict crack length based on the number of fatigue cycles, AE event number, and both the Fatigue Cycles and AE events, as inputs respectively. Network using both fatigue cycles andmore »
- Authors:
- Structural Health Monitoring and NDE Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Missouri-Rolla, 1870 Miner Circle Rolla MO 65409-0050 (United States)
- Publication Date:
- OSTI Identifier:
- 21054948
- Resource Type:
- Journal Article
- Resource Relation:
- Journal Name: AIP Conference Proceedings; Journal Volume: 894; Journal Issue: 1; Conference: Conference on review of progress in quantitative nondestructive evaluation, Portland, OR (United States), 30 Jul - 4 Aug 2006; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2718147; (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 36 MATERIALS SCIENCE; ACOUSTIC EMISSION TESTING; AGING; AIRCRAFT; ALUMINIUM; ALUMINIUM ALLOYS; BORON; COMPOSITE MATERIALS; CRACK PROPAGATION; CRACKS; DETECTION; FATIGUE; FIBERS; LOADING; MAINTENANCE; NEURAL NETWORKS; POLYMERS; SENSORS
Citation Formats
Okafor, A. Chukwujekwu, Singh, Navdeep, and Singh, Navrag. Acoustic Emission Detection and Prediction of Fatigue Crack Propagation in Composite Patch Repairs Using Neural Networks. United States: N. p., 2007.
Web. doi:10.1063/1.2718147.
Okafor, A. Chukwujekwu, Singh, Navdeep, & Singh, Navrag. Acoustic Emission Detection and Prediction of Fatigue Crack Propagation in Composite Patch Repairs Using Neural Networks. United States. doi:10.1063/1.2718147.
Okafor, A. Chukwujekwu, Singh, Navdeep, and Singh, Navrag. Wed .
"Acoustic Emission Detection and Prediction of Fatigue Crack Propagation in Composite Patch Repairs Using Neural Networks". United States.
doi:10.1063/1.2718147.
@article{osti_21054948,
title = {Acoustic Emission Detection and Prediction of Fatigue Crack Propagation in Composite Patch Repairs Using Neural Networks},
author = {Okafor, A. Chukwujekwu and Singh, Navdeep and Singh, Navrag},
abstractNote = {An aircraft is subjected to severe structural and aerodynamic loads during its service life. These loads can cause damage or weakening of the structure especially for aging military and civilian aircraft, thereby affecting its load carrying capabilities. Hence composite patch repairs are increasingly used to repair damaged aircraft metallic structures to restore its structural efficiency. This paper presents the results of Acoustic Emission (AE) monitoring of crack propagation in 2024-T3 Clad aluminum panels repaired with adhesively bonded octagonal, single sided boron/epoxy composite patch under tension-tension fatigue loading. Crack propagation gages were used to monitor crack initiation. The identified AE sensor features were used to train neural networks for predicting crack length. The results show that AE events are correlated with crack propagation. AE system was able to detect crack propagation even at high noise condition of 10 Hz loading; that crack propagation signals can be differentiated from matrix cracking signals that take place due to fiber breakage in the composite patch. Three back-propagation cascade feed forward networks were trained to predict crack length based on the number of fatigue cycles, AE event number, and both the Fatigue Cycles and AE events, as inputs respectively. Network using both fatigue cycles and AE event number as inputs to predict crack length gave the best results, followed by Network with fatigue cycles as input, while network with just AE events as input had a greater error.},
doi = {10.1063/1.2718147},
journal = {AIP Conference Proceedings},
number = 1,
volume = 894,
place = {United States},
year = {Wed Mar 21 00:00:00 EDT 2007},
month = {Wed Mar 21 00:00:00 EDT 2007}
}
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