Damage detection of surface crack in composite quasi-isotropic laminate using modal analysis and strain energy method

This paper presents a damage detection of surface crack in composite laminate. Carbon/epoxy composite AS4/PEEK was used to fabricate a quasi-isotropic laminate [0/90/+/- 45](2s). Surface crack was created by using laser cutting machine. Modal analysis was performed to obtain the mode shapes of the laminate before and after damage. The mode shapes were then adopted to compute the strain energy, which was used to define a damage index. Consequently, the damage index successfully predicted the location of surface crack in the laminate. Differential quadrature method (DQM) was introduced to calculate the partial differential terms in strain energy formula.