Evaluation of Defects in Multilayer Carbon Fibre Epoxy for Aeronautics Applications

Production of carbon fibre reinforced polymers is an elaborate process unfree from faults and problems. Problems during the manufacturing, such as plies’ overlapping, can cause flaws in the resulting material, so compromising its integrity. Compared with metallic materials, carbon epoxy composites show a number of advantages. Within this framework, ultrasonic tests are effective to identify the presence of defects. In this paper a Finite Element Method approach is proposed for evaluating the most effective incidence angle of an ultrasonic probe with regard to defects’ identification. According to our goal, the analysis has been carried out considering a single-line plane emitting source varying the probe angle of inclination. The proposed model looks promising to specially emphasize the presence of delaminations as well as massive breaking in a specimen of multilayer carbon fibre epoxy. Subsequently, simulation parameters and results have been exploited and compared, respectively, for a preliminary experimental in-lab campaign of measurements with encouraging results.