CORRELATION OF ACOUSTIC EMISSION AND STRAIN/DEFLECTION MEASUREMENT DURING COMPOSITE AIRFRAME STATIC TESTS

Acoustic emission (AE) improves detection, location, and characteriztion of damage during ultimate load testing of composite airframe structure. The AE system hardware and software is described, along with the criteria used to determine the placement of the transducers. The ability of the system to detect, locate, and to some extent characterize composite AE events is shown with specific examples from airframe static test programs. AE count rates are shown to correlate with load/strain and load/deflection nonlinearities during significant structural damage (cracks, delaminations).