Delamination detection in composite laminates using a vibration-based chaotic oscillator method

The work is aimed to study the effectiveness of delamination detection in composite laminates using a vibration-based method that incorporates a chaotic oscillator. Delamination is a typical damage that can occur in composite laminates, which can severely degrade their material properties. However, the traditional vibration-based methods generally have certain limitations in detecting these delamination-type damages particularly when the measured signal is corrupted by noise. With this consideration, a vibration-based method using a non-linear chaotic oscillator is proposed due to its sensitivity to the change in the associated vibration signal’s characteristics. A numerical model of composite laminate with delamination damage under harmonic excitation is developed and the vibration signal obtained from the composite laminate is processed using the proposed vibration-based chaotic oscillator method. The relationship between the Lyapunov Exponent (LE) feature and the length of delamination is investigated. It is found that there is a strong correlation between the size of delamination and the LE feature. The results show the feasibility of using this proposed method to identify the delamination in composite laminates.