Simulation of Thermographic Responses of Realistically Shaped Delaminations with the Quadrupole Method

Abstract

<p>A method for simulating thermal responses of delaminations in carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composites materials application of the quadrupole method is presented. Results presented are for both single measurements and two sided measurements with flash heating. Expansion of the technique to arbitrary temporal flux heating is simple. The quadrupole method is shown to have two distinct advantages relative to finite element or finite difference techniques. First, incorporation of arbitrarily shaped delaminations into the simulation is relatively simple. Second, the quadrupole method enables calculation of the thermal response at only the times of interest. This, combined with a significant reduction in the number of degrees of freedom for the same simulation quality, results in a reduction of the computation time by at least an order of magnitude. Therefore it is a more viable technique for model based inversion of thermographic data. Results for simulations of delaminations in composites are presented and compared to measurements and finite element method results.</p>