Abstract

Fiber reinforced polymers (FRPs) are increasingly used in thick primary load-bearing structures, while manufacturing and in-service defects occur with a higher chance as the composite thickness increases, which entails the nondestructive detection and evaluation of potential structure defects. This study focuses on the imaging qualities of defects at different depth in thick FRPs via total focusing method (TFM), aiming at determining the optimum imaging strategy for thick FRPs (25 mm for discussion). Dynamic homogenization based on Floquet theory and numerical finite element analysis are performed to interrogate the wave propagation characteristics. The Frequency-dependent time correction method for TFM imaging (F-TFM) is proposed for accurate defect imaging in periodically layered crossply FRP. Finally, the results show that the proposed F-TFM method is able to detect and locate the defects of 2 mm size at all possible depth.