Spectral Characteristics of Acoustic Emission in Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Composite Materials Subjected to Cyclic Loading

Abstract

The article is devoted to the investigation of the spectral characteristics of acoustic emission signals that appear under various schemes of composite materials loading. The tests involved samples of composites reinforced with layers sheets of carbon fiber fabric and dispersed carbon fibers. Based on the results of laboratory tests, a comparison is made between the traditional parameters of acoustic emission and the complete spectrograms of the acoustic emission response developed with the use of a special algorithm. The relationship between the emission activity and the change in the spectral composition of emission hits is shown. For example, for some composites, the acoustic emission memory effect (Kaiser effect) manifests itself not only in the time domain but also in the spectral domain in a form of a sharp change in the amplitudes in the frequency range 130/150 kHz. Also, when the samples were loaded according to the Brazilian scheme, the presence of the so-called “inverse” Kaiser effect is observed, in which the memory carrier “remembers” the previously experienced level of tensile stresses and reproduces this information during subsequent unloading. Such effect manifests itself in the form of a sharp change in the amplitudes in the low-frequency region of the spectrum.