Monitoring tensile damage evolution in Nextel 312/Blackglas™ composites

Tensile damage evolution was monitored with the aid of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques. Several NDE methods, such as ultrasonic testing (UT), infrared (IR) thermography, and acoustic emission (AE) techniques, were employed to analyze damage evolution during tensile testing of Nextel 312/Blackglas™ composites. Prior to tensile testing, UT was used to characterize the initial defect distribution of the samples. During tensile testing, AE sensors and an IR camera were used for in situ monitoring of the progressive damage of the samples. AE provided the amounts of damage evolution in terms of the AE intensity and/or energy, and the IR camera was used to obtain the temperature changes during the test. Microstructural characterization using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was performed to investigate the fracture mechanisms and modes of Nextel 312/Blackglas™ samples. Moreover, SEM characterization was used to document failure behavior, and to show comparable results with NDE signatures.