Damage Evaluation of Sandwich Structures Using Vibration and Thermal Signatures

Combining NDE techniques can prove to be beneficial in assessing the physical state of health of composite sandwich structures. Several NDE techniques were examined from which vibration and thermal responses were selected. A Neural Network (NN) was chosen as a means to interpret and classify the information such that the type of damage, severity and location could be identified. Numerical simulations were used to train the NN and experimental measurements were used to test and validate the approach.