Towards mechanisms-guided resistivity-based monitoring of damage evolution in laminated composites

A convenient health monitoring technique for detecting degradation in laminated composite is to monitor the change of electrical resistance along multiple conduction paths within the structure. Yet, the relations between the global modification of resistivity and the exact underlying damage map is still unclear that makes diffcult to interpret these nondestructive-testing results. The challenge is then to be able to reconstruct from these global observation the underlying damage map. This is even more diffcult due to the numerous underlying damage mechanisms that can take place either at the inter laminar of intra laminar level. This paper intends to provide some preliminary insights about strategies to recover the damage state based only on global measurements. We focus here on transverse cracking detection. We introduce the homogenization process that defines at the meso scale an equivalent homogeneous ply that is energetically equivalent to the cracked one. This can be used as a first tool to reconstruct damage maps based on global resistivity measurements.