Evaluation of the thermal aging of aeronautical composite materials using Lamb waves

This work aims to demonstrate the ability to evaluate bulk thermal aging of aeronautical composite materials using Lamb waves. These composite materials are bi-dimensional woven composite structures with polymers matrix. More than 20 different thermal aging profiles are obtained by modulating the temperature and curing duration. The impact on material properties is evaluated using normalized destructive characterization and x-ray computed tomography. Lamb waves are generated and detected using a single 3 MHz phased array transducer in contact with the composite structure. In that way, a spatio-temporal image of elastic wave propagation in the composite material is obtained. The dispersion curves are calculated by using a bi-dimensional discrete Fourier transform or singular value decomposition to project the experimental data into the wavenumber-frequency domain. Both methods allow for accurate estimation of the Lamb wave dispersion curves. Thermal aging is then evaluated by comparing experimental data with a set of dispersion curves that correspond to different controlled thermal aging profiles. Our promising results open the door toward quantitative evaluation of composite material thermal aging on the runway.