Identification of damage mechanisms of carbon fiber reinforced silicon carbide composites under static loading using acoustic emission monitoring

Abstract The damage mechanisms of carbon fiber reinforced silicon carbide (C/SiC) composites under static loading are investigated using the acoustic emission technology. The C/SiC sample is subjected to compressing static load, and acoustic emission is used to monitor the cracking process. In addition, the digital image correlation technique is also applied to enhance the comprehension of the damage mechanisms of C/SiC composites. To evaluate their extent of damage, the main acoustic emission characteristic parameters and indexes are extracted. The k-means clustering method is used to analyze the acoustic emission (AE) signals, identify the three damage modes, and determine the central values of the AE parameters of these modes. The time–frequency energy of some typical signals is analyzed by using the wavelet packet transform. Thereafter, the damage evolution is described by analyzing the cumulative number of acoustic emission events and the cumulative energy change with loading time. Moreover, the digital imaging results show that the strain in the structure increases with the increase in loading magnitude, especially in the area around the fault zone, where the strain level is evidently higher than those in other locations. Accordingly, this necessitates effective methods for investigating damage in C/SiC composites. Among the two different technologies implemented in this work, the extraction of AE events at several stages of the test allows the classification and analysis of crack evolution in C/SiC structures; this technique also provides an effective methodology to monitor the damage at the microscopic scale.