Nonlinear dynamic behavior of impact damage in a composite skin-stiffener structure

One of the key issues in composite structures for aircraft applications is the early identification of damage. Often, service induced damage does not involve visible plastic deformation, but internal matrix related damage, like delaminations. A wide range of technologies, comprising global vibration and local wave propagation methods can be employed for health monitoring purposes. Traditional low frequency modal analysis based methods are linear methods. The effectiveness of these methods is often limited since they rely on a stationary and linear approximation of the system. The nonlinear interaction between a low frequency wave field and a local impact induced skin-stiffener failure is experimentally demonstrated in this paper. The different mechanisms that are responsible for the nonlinearities (opening, closing and contact) of the distorted harmonic waveforms are separated with the help of phase portraits. A basic analytical model is employed to support the observations.