Ultra-fast time-lapse synchrotron radiation CT imaging of compressive failure in unidirectional glass fibre-epoxy composite

This series of ultra-fast X-ray computed tomography datasets were acquired on the TOMCAT beamline at the Swiss Light Source by the composite group at Henry Moseley X-ray Imaging Facility (within the Henry Royce Institute @Manchester).

The experiment was designed to help understand the catastrophic failure of unidirectional fibre reinforced composites under compression, as part of Ying Wang's PhD project (Damage Mechanisms Associated with Kink-Band Formation in Unidirectional Fibre Composites) supervised by Prof. Philip J. Withers.

A notched unidirectional glass fibre-epoxy composite specimen was loaded in-situ under compression in a tension/compression rig developed at INSA-Lyon. An initial scan of the composite gauge section was acquired before loading (GFRP_Initial.zip). During the in-situ loading process, the composite specimen was imaged statically at 200 N (GFRP_Static_200N.zip) and 600 N (GFRP_Static_600N.zip), after which the acquisition mode was changed to continuous streaming in order to capture the final stages immediately leading up to failure, at 876 N (GFRP_Continuous_876N.zip), 893 N (GFRP_Continuous_893N.zip), 895 N (GFRP_Continuous_895N.zip), and right after collapse (at 79 N, GFRP_Failed.zip).

The CT acquisition speed attained 1 tomogram per second. The voxel size of the reconstructed CT data-sets is (1.1 μm)³.

Update regarding the fibre trajectories on 20 August 2024:

The extracted fibre trajectories dataset for Fig.4 in the published paper "Wang, Y., Emerson, M. J., Conradsen, K., Dahl, A. B., Dahl, V. A., Maire, E. and Withers, P. J. (2021). Evolution of Fibre Deflection Leading to Kink-band Formation in Unidirectional Glass Fibre/Epoxy Composite Under Axial Compression. Composites Science and Technology, 213, 108929. " has been added to this new version.

Please note that the centre positions of 5229 fibres (the row number of x and y coordinates corresponds to the fibre number) on the 1264 xy CT slices (the column number of x and y coordinates corresponds to the slice number) were stored in this file. The x, y, and z (slice number) coordinates all need to be multiplied by the voxel size of 1.1 μm to get the physical positions of the fibre trajectories.

For use of the data, please cite the DOI of the repository and the relevant papers -

http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13348028

Wang, Y., Emerson, M. J., Conradsen, K., Dahl, A. B., Dahl, V. A., Maire, E. and Withers, P. J. (2021). Evolution of Fibre Deflection Leading to Kink-band Formation in Unidirectional Glass Fibre/Epoxy Composite Under Axial Compression. Composites Science and Technology, 213, 108929. 

Emerson, M. J., Wang, Y., Withers, P. J., Conradsen, K., Dahl, A. B., and Dahl, V. A. (2018). Quantifying fibre reorientation during axial compression of a composite through time-lapse X-ray imaging and individual fibre tracking. Composites Science and Technology, 168, 47-54. 

Wang, Y., Garcea, S. C., Lowe, T., Maire, E., Soutis, C. and Withers, P. J. (2016). Ultra-fast time-lapse synchrotron radiographic imaging of compressive failure in CFRP. In ECCM16-16th European Conference on Composite Materials, Munich, Germany.

Garcea, S. C. , Wang, Y. and Withers, P. J. (2018). X-ray computed tomography of polymer composites, Composites Science and Technology (156), 305-319.

Wang, Y., Garcea, S. C. and Withers, P. J. (2018). Computed Tomography of Composites in Comprehensive Composite
Materials II (7), 101-118. Eds. Beaumont PWR, Zweben CH. Elsevier.

Contact details of the authors:

Ying Wang - ywang1@buaa.edu.cn

Philip J. Withers - p.j.withers@manchester.ac.uk