Fatigue Damage Diagnostics of Composites Using Data Fusion and Data Augmentation With Deep Neural Networks

Composite materials can be modified according to the requirements of applications, and hence, their applications are increasing significantly with time. Due to the complex nature of the aging of composites, it is equally challenging to establish structural health monitoring techniques. One of the most applied non-destructive techniques for this class of materials is using Lamb waves to quantify the damage. Another important advancement in damage detection is the application of deep neural networks. The data-driven methods have proven to be most efficient for damage detection in composites. For both of these advanced methods, the burning question always has been the requirement of data and quality of data. In this paper, these measurements were used to create a framework based on a deep neural network for efficient fault diagnostics. The research question developed for this paper was as follows: Can data fusion techniques used along with data augmentation improve the damage diagnostics using the convolutional neural network? The specific aims developed to answer this research question were: (1) highlighting the importance of data fusion methods, (2) underlining the importance of data augmentation techniques, (3) generalization abilities of the proposed framework, and (4) sensitivity of the size of the dataset. The results obtained through the analysis concluded that the artificial intelligence techniques along with the Lamb wave measurements can efficiently improve the fault diagnostics of complex materials such as composites.