Development of the laser shock wave adhesion test on bonded CFRP composite

The purpose of this paper is to develop a laser shock adhesion test (LASAT) and evaluate its ability to reveal various bond qualities of stuck carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) industrial assemblies.

Four grades of adhesion were prepared by release agent contamination of CFRP prior to assembly. Laser shots were performed at different intensities on these samples.

To characterize and quantify the damage created by the propagation of shock waves in the bonded material, several diagnoses were used (confocal microscopy, ultra-sound inspection and cross-sections microscopy). These three post-mortem techniques are complementary and provide consistent results.

The combination of these diagnoses along with the LASAT technique provides relevant information on the bond quality in agreement with GIC values measured by the University of Patras.