Damage Assessment in Pultruded GFRP with AE

Abstract: Pultrusion is a process for manufacturing uniform section composite profiles, which allows to obtain structural elements of virtually any length. The use of E-glass fiber allows to obtain a material with a good rigidity-to-weight and strength-to-weight ratio; these features allowed to use these materials in civil struc- tures, such as poles for anti-noise panels and public lighting, also thanks to their insulating properties. However, the knowledge on the damage development of these materials is still uncertain, and this is slowing down their development. For these reasons, an experimental study on pultruded materials aimed at identify- ing the damage modes has been developed. A set of glass-fiber reinforced pultruded specimens, with two different configurations of additional random short-fiber lay- ers were investigated in tensile tests. Each specimen was monitored with Acoustic Emission sensors through all the test, until breakage. This allowed to gather data and follow the damage development and evolution in this material. The analysis of the Acoustic Emission data allowed to identify some common stages of the static damage modes, and some differences between the two different configurations. Also, the results will allow to extend the monitoring to full-scale elements, with the purpose of testing and real-time health monitoring of structures. The results suggest that Acoustic Emission is a suitable technique to monitor the structural health of full-scale elements and for in-situ operations.