Self-Sensing & Self-Healing Composites via Embedded Mechanophores

Composites are being adopted increasingly in aerospace structures due to their superior specific stiffness and strength, their resistance to fatigue and ability to greatly reduce part count. They present additional challenges for design however, due to their heterogeneity and anisotropy, and for inspection since damage often occurs beneath their surface. Currently successful laboratory non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods are impractical for service inspection of large-area composite structures due to their complexity. Thus new approaches for NDE are necessary to assure structural integrity for composite structures. During this proposed research, Metis Design Corporation in collaboration with Arizona State University will investigate the use of embedded mechanophores to detect damage initiation in composite materials through fluorescent response. The work will also be extended to embedded self-healing architectures.