Experimental vibration study on the healthy and delaminated composite plates

Vibration based damage, in particular delamination detection, in the composite structures is an active research area. The present study is also on the dynamics of the composite plates with and without delamination based on the experimental study. The test plate made of E-glass fibre and epoxy resins has been used here. A piezo-electric shaker has been used to excite the composite plate and the acceleration responses were measured using the number of accelerometers. The dynamics of the delaminated composite plates were then compared with a healthy composite plate when the vibration experiments have been conducted at the lower modes. The paper will discuss the observations made on the measured vibration responses from both the healthy and the delaminated plates and the possibility of the delamination detection from the experimental vibration data. © 2011 Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.