Date of Award
12-1-2016
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Mechanical Engineering
First Advisor
Chu, Tsuchin
Abstract
Increasing use of composite materials in industry brings the need for newer and more practical methods to evaluate them. Widespread use of composite materials heavily depends on the manufacturer’s ability to unquestionably ensure its safety, given how much the user trusts them. Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) can be used to evaluate adhesive bondline health. This thesis employs Digital Image Correlation (DIC) method, one of the known methods in NDE, and combines it with an embedded speckle pattern in order to obtain valuable information from within the adhesive bondline. By recording the movement of the speckles and analyzing their behavior according to DIC algorithms, a strain map of the adhesive is drawn. An adhesive strain map helps find defects that might be out of sight using conventional NDE methods. This thesis discusses different possible materials to be used as the speckle pattern and chooses the one shows better results based on different criteria. Then employing the material, it records the speckle pattern using optical and ultrasonic methods to draw a strain map. By analyzing the obtained strain maps, defects within the bondline are revealed.
Access
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