Analysis of Laser Interfrometry Parameters in the Evaluation of Defects in the Polymer Matrix Composites

Laser interferometry is one of the most applicable methods of calculating the surface displacement derivatives that can visualize very small displacement gradients, in µm/m level, on a relatively large area of a sample surface at once. This method can be beneficially used in industrial non-destructive tasting of materials, especially composites. However, getting an acceptable result of this inspection method, depends on the identification and properly adjusting the test parameters to a great extent. Shear size and loading amount, are the most important factors affecting crack detection ability in laser interferometry technique, which are both investigated in this paper. In this regard, several composite specimens with several cracks in different lengths have been prepared and tested with different parameters. Various tensile loading are applied to specify the allowable limit load in different shear sizes. Eventually, the effects of the crack inclination relative to the load direction are studied. The test results show that the best responses are observed with a shear size equal to the approximated defect sizes and a limited band of the loading range can be used to reveal the cracks.