Experimental and numerical investigation on detection of BVID in CFRP composite plates using vibro-acoustic modulation

Carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) composite has gained popularity due to the advantages such as its high strength-to-weight ratio and high corrosion resistance, but susceptibility to barely visible impact damage limits their use in engineering. This study experimentally and numerically investigates the detection of BVID in CFRP composite plates using Vibro-acoustic modulation (VAM) technique. An experimental system of VAM was constructed for measuring sidebands induced by the nonlinear effects of BVID. An integrated finite element (FE) model is developed to further explore the nonlinear interaction between the BVID, low-frequency pump, and high-frequency probe waves. To address this issue of the mesh size and computational time step mismatch caused by the large difference in frequency between the pump and probe waves, a regionally refined mesh was employed at the BVID region. Furthermore, the effects of BVID’s size and depth on the modulation were discussed. Through the Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT), the amplitude modulation (AM) and frequency modulation (FM) indexes were extracted from the VAM responses to quantitatively characterise the impact damages. The results demonstrate that the MIA index increases steadily with the exciting voltage and damage degree, making it a suitable indicator to accurately assess the impact damage in CFRP composites.