Numerical and Experimental Simulations of Damage Identification in Carbon/Kevlar Hybrid Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Plates Using the Free Vibration Measurements

Damage identification is an essential program in monitoring the health structures of the mechanical, civil, and aeronautical structures. The vibration measurements are one of the techniques used in this respect on the basis that the stiffness is reduced due to any defect and therefore, the natural frequency is reduced correspondingly. In this work, a rectangular composite cantilever plate was designed and analysed using the ANSYS package employing an experimental data program. Vibration sensors were used sensor used to detect the effect of crack length in carbon/Kevlar hybrid fiber-reinforced polymer composites, and a numerical analysis was performed via Ansys software to examine different crack scenarios. The effect of damage length was experimentally detected in carbon/Kevlar hybrid fiber-reinforced polymer composites using the sensor vibration measurements in the present work. The Finite element analysis (FEA) was applied to determine the most significant notch length in the carbon/Kevlar hybrid fiber-reinforced polymer composite structure. The investigation was performed at several different lengths and locations, including vertical and horizontal incisions. The experimental were agreed with those obtained numerically with a discrepancy not more than 5% which proves that the numerical cheap solution is an adequate in predicting failure mode of the structure and can be used to health monitoring of composite structures.