Designing ferrite impregnated epoxy actuators for impact damage detection in carbon fibre reinforced composites

Carbon fibre reinforced polymers composites possess properties that outstrip their component parts, and are seeing increased adoption in sectors such as the aerospace industry. Due to complex failure mechanisms, it is necessary have structural health monitoring (SHM) place. Previous work has shown efficacy of magnetostrictive materials damage detection actuators; issues spatial sensitivity require improvement progress applicability SHM. Another requirement demonstrate ease-of-fabrication conjunction detectability, also maintain a good weight-to-cost trade-off. In this paper we step-by-step approach fabrication optimisation an impregnated epoxy matrix aims satisfy these requirements.