Structural Health Monitoring of Epoxy Bond between Dissimilar Materials
Structures composed of adhesively bonded materials face many challenges when subjected to thermal loading, as adherend material(s) behave differently and can induce stresses in the glue bond. Current methods to test bond strength are limited to destructive tests, which increase costs to produce adhesively bonded structures. Strain gages are proposed to monitor the expansion profile of adhesive bonds as structures undergo thermal loading. Because resulting signals are DC in nature, no spectral quantities can be observed. Principle component analysis (PCA) is proposed to differentiate between damaged and undamaged structures. Training data are taken for various damage states and the minimum Mahalanobis distance is calculated to categorize testing data into damage state. The results indicate the potential for a strain-gage based monitoring system with PCA based decision-making, with further research necessary prior to implementation of the system.