Abstract
Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) laminated structures are applied to many aerospace structures. Although the CFRP laminates have high specific strength and specific stiffness, delamination cracks are easily created and the delamination cracks are usually difficult to be detected by visual inspections. Recently, high toughness CFRP laminates are adopted to primary structures. The tough CFRP yields small fiber breakages hen delamination crack is made in many cases. This requires a detection system of fiber breakages at low cost for large structures. In the present study, Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) is adopted. TDR uses an electrical pulse wave and observes the reflected wavefrom. The method is applied to a 2m CFRP strip specimen and notches are detected from the reflected pulse wavefonn.
