A New Method for Individual Impact Damage and Repair Assessment on Composite Structures based on Residual Strength Analysis

Abstract

In this paper, a new method is introduced to support the maintenance process concerning decision making. Within this method, the individual damage and repair solutions can be assessed based on actual residual strength assessment by integrating three modules: the first is dedicated to the automatic identification of the impact damage through image segmentation of relevant damage features such as delaminations and fiber cracks captured with non-destructive methods; the second module enables an individual residual strength prediction of the damaged structure at hand, which is the basis for the decision whether immediate repair is required or not; finally, the third module provides a means of determining the load bearing capacity of a relevant bonded-repair concept with a given set of parameters. The results obtained by applying this new method including all three modules have been validated by experimental coupon tests.