An investigation of fatigue damage growth in composites materials using the vibration response phase decay

The increasing use of polymer composites in industry asks for the creation of better, faster and cost-effective methods to detect the damage state of such materials. This work presents the investigation of the phase decay , $\mathrm{\Delta }\mathrm{\Phi }$, as a new parameter to characterise crack growth in composites materials utilising an experimental framework of High Frequency Fatigue Testing (HFFT), a framework where the excitation occurs at vibration resonance. The proposed methodology empirically relates the crack growth measurements, from interrupted testing, with the structural phase decay response, distinctive of material strength degradation