Identification of initial delamination is crucial to ensure the safety of the fiber-reinforced laminated composite structures. Amongst the identification approaches based on mode shapes, the concept of multiscale shear-strain gradient (MSG) has an explicit physical sense of characterizing delamination-induced singularity of shear strains; moreover, it is robust against noise interference owing to the merits of multiscale analysis. However, the capacity of the MSG for identifying initial delamination is insufficient because the delamination-induced singularity peak can be largely obscured by the global component of the MSG. Addressing this problem, this study proposes an enhanced approach for identifying initial delamination in fiber-reinforced composite laminates. In particular, the multiscale modulation filter (MMF) is proposed to modulate the MSG with the aim of focusing on damage features, by which a new concept of enhanced MSG (EMSG) is formulated to extract damage features. By taking advantage of the MMF with the optimal frequency translation parameters, the EMSG is concentrated in a narrow wavenumber band, which is dominated by the damage-induced singularity peak. As a consequence, the delamination-induced singularity peak in the EMSG can be isolated from the global component. The capacity of the approach for identifying initial delamination is experimentally validated on a carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminate, whose mode shapes are acquired via non-contact laser measurement. The experimental results reveal that the EMSG-based approach is capable of graphically characterizing the presence, location, and size of initial delamination in CFRP laminates.
Keywords: CFRP laminate; identification of initial delamination; multiscale modulation filter; non-contact laser measurement; shear strain singularity.