Sensitivity of embedded fibre optic Bragg grating sensors to disbonds in bonded composite ship joints

The potential application of embedded fibre optic Bragg grating strain sensors for the health monitoring of adhesively bonded composite ship joints is investigated in this paper. Bragg grating sensors were embedded at various locations along the interface of adhesively bonded glass-reinforced plastic composite joints with artificially introduced disbonds to assess their capability to detect bond-line damage under in-plane shear and through-thickness tension. Finite element (FE) models indicated that the presence of the disbond significantly altered the bond-line strain distribution under such loads. The embedded sensors successfully detected this effect, and the sensor measurements compared well to FE predictions. However, the experimental measurements of the magnitude of the strain at the tips of the disbonds showed significant variations, presumably due to its high sensitivity to defect edge conditions which could not be experimentally controlled with a high degree of repeatability. Both the FE models and the experimental results showed that the effect of disbond damage was localised, more so under in-plane shear than through-thickness tension. This would necessitate the use of an optimised sensor array and pattern recognition algorithm for the reliable detection of an arbitrary disbond.