Numerical analysis of aerospace plate damage via 3D electrical impedance tomography

The carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) is widely used in the aerospace industry due to its high strength and lightweight characteristics, making it crucial to ensure the reliability of these materials. This has led to an increasing focus on research on the health monitoring technologies of aerospace materials. Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is a non-invasive and cost-effective technology that has the potential to realize real-time health monitoring of materials by measuring changes in electrical parameters. This paper investigates the application of EIT for direct 3D reconstruction of damage in CFRP laminates with significant conductivity anisotropy distribution. Based on the corrected sensitivity matrix formula, the direct 3D image reconstruction method combined with the fast iterative shrinkage-thresholding algorithm (FISTA) is proposed to achieve damage imaging of CFRP laminates in the inverse problem. The fast convergence of the FISTA makes it possible to solve complex inverse problems. The numerical simulation results indicate that, compared with 2D EIT, the proposed method is more capable of providing damage information, especially in the depth direction. This research plays a constructive role in realizing 3D image reconstruction of CFRP material damage and has significant implications for improving the reliability and safety of CFRP materials in aerospace applications.