Application of Ultrasonic Phased Array for Nondestructive Detection of Damage in Biaxial Cruciform

Abstract

During the last decades, the use of fibre-reinforced composites has largely increased and currently, these materials are used in almost every industrial sector. Yet, current research shows a number of important shortcomings, both in the experimental and theoretical domain. Standard mechanical tests on uniaxially loaded specimens appear unsatisfactorily for an accurate description of the mechanical behaviour of these materials. A biaxial loading approach should give a better representation. In the past, different techniques were developed for creating a biaxial loading state. Anticlastic bending of thin rhomb plates and tension/torsion of thin-walled tubes are just two out of a series of possible solutions [1–5]. A recent alternative technique is the loading of a cruciform specimen (Fig. 1) along its two orthogonal directions. This shows a lot of advantages compared to the other methods [6–7].