Modal Strain Energy-Based Debonding Assessment of Sandwich Panels Using a Linear Approximation with Maximum Entropy

Sandwich structures are very attractive due to their high strength at a minimum weight, and, therefore, there has been a rapid increase in their applications. Nevertheless, these structures may present imperfect bonding or debonding between the skins and core as a result of manufacturing defects or impact loads, degrading their mechanical properties. To improve both the safety and functionality of these systems, structural damage assessment methodologies can be implemented. This article presents a damage assessment algorithm to localize and quantify debonds in sandwich panels. The proposed algorithm uses damage indices derived from the modal strain energy method and a linear approximation with a maximum entropy algorithm. Full-field vibration measurements of the panels were acquired using a high-speed 3D digital image correlation (DIC) system. Since the number of damage indices per panel is too large to be used directly in a regression algorithm, reprocessing of the data using principal component analysis (PCA) and kernel PCA has been performed. The results demonstrate that the proposed methodology accurately identifies debonding in composite panels.