Abstract
The need for multifunctional carbon fibre composite laminates has emerged to improve the reliability and safety of carbon fibre composite components and decrease costs. The development of an electrical selfsensing system for woven fabric carbon fibre composite laminate panels which can detect and locate damage due to impact events is presented. The electrical sensing system uses a four probe electrical resistance method. Two different sensing mats are investigated, the main difference between them are the surface area of the electrodes and the distance between the electrodes. To investigate the damage sensitivity of the sensing system for woven fabric carbon fibre composite laminate panels, panels are produced with various thicknesses from 0.84 to 3.5 mm and are impacted at energies from 1 to 10 J to generate barely visible impact damage. Damage is detected using global electrical resistance changes, the changes in electrical resistance vary depending on carbon fibre volume fraction, spacing distance between the sensing electrodes in the sensing mats, the surface area of the electrodes, damage size, and damage type; it is found that the thicker the panel, the less sensitive the electrical resistance system is. The effect of the surface area of the sensing electrodes is high on the electrical resistance baseline, where the baseline increases by up to 55% when the surface area of the sensing electrodes increases from 100 mm2 to 400 mm2; while spacing distance between electrodes has a greater effect on damage sensitivity of the electrical resistance sensing system than the surface area of the sensing electrodes.