Structural Health Monitoring of Scarfed Repaired Composite Panels Using Inject-Printed Patterns

Abstract

A novel strategy is proposed for monitoring of bonded composite repair patch is developed and tested. A specially designed pattern was inject-printed onto the step-sanded repair surface providing real time information about the bondline structural integrity. The obtained results indicated that the proposed methodology was able to detect damage induced by an impact event. Infrared thermography (IrT) and ultrasound inspection were also employed in order to validate the proposed methodology.