Fatigue damage identification for composite pipeline systems using electrical capacitance sensors

This research investigates a damage identification framework for carbon fiber reinforced polymer composite pipeline systems using electrical capacitance sensors. First, a finite element pipeline model is established under the structural-thermal-electrostatic coupled field. Based on this model, an accumulative damage model is introduced to model the pipeline damage subjected to fatigue effect, and ten damage cases are considered. Both static and transient external excitations are loaded into the pipeline by installing distributed electrical capacitance sensors. A system transfer function is proposed and applied to the 'open loop' pipeline system. Results show these approaches perform great promises when damage evolves covering electrode pairs, the signal will change sensitively and abruptly with an order of magnitude.