Resistor Network for Forward Calculation in Electrical Resistance Tomography of Carbon Fiber-Reinforced Composites

Carbon fiber-reinforced composites (CFRCs) exhibit the characteristic of coupling resistance and damage; therefore, electrical resistance tomography (ERT) can be used to image in situ damage. However, there is a lack of research on the development of forward calculation for CFRCs anisotropy in ERT. In this article, a resistor network (RN) is proposed as an ERT forward calculation method based on the structure and conductive properties of CFRCs. The CFRCs is equivalent to a RN through segmentation and projection. Compared with the finite element method (FEM), the forward calculation speed using the RN method is increased by approximately $250\times $ . Through convergence analysis, RN can effectively detect single-point areas of damage with a rate larger than 1%. Using the network calculation mode, the RN method can efficiently set anisotropic conductivity according to material properties to obtain realistic imaging effects. In this study, through the experimental verification of CFRPs and C/SiC, ERT combined with RN could effectively detect damage information, increasing the overall imaging speed by 100%.

I. Introduction

As humans advance in deep space exploration, extraterrestrial spacecraft must develop the capability to perceive damage in their structures to evaluate subsequent mission performance. This is known as the in situ damage monitoring capability [1], [2]. To increase payload, spacecrafts widely use lightweight and high-strength carbon fiber-reinforced composites (CFRCs) as their structural materials. However, in situ damage monitoring technology for CFRCs is still in the exploratory stage.