| ABSTRACT: | COMPARISON OF OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY AND X-RAY COMPUTED
TOMOGRAPHY FOR CHARACTERISATION OF GLAS-FIBRE POLYMER MATRIX
COMPOSITES
J.Kastner1, E. Schlotthauer1, D. Stifter2, P. Burgholzer
2
1 X-per-x Inc., Wels, Austria; 2 Upper Austrian Research Gmbh, Linz, Austria
Glas-fibre reinforced polymer matrix composites exhibit superior properties to traditional materials. Thus,
they have found a broad variety of applications in modern industry. For process development and quality
control of polymer matrix composites sophisticated methods for non-destructive characterisation are needed.
Especially for the inspection of complex geometries or critical features located inside the materials, non
destructive testing imaging technologies are of great advantage and are very often necessary.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a novel non-invasive technique which permits high-resolution
cross-sectional imaging. OCT has been originally developed for medical diagnostics, especially for the
detection of eye diseases. Just recently the potential of OCT has been discovered also for non-destructive
analysis of materials. In this paper we compare OCT with the more traditional method of micro-X-ray
computer tomography (µ-CT). We outline the advantages and disadvantages of both methods for
characterisation of glass fibre epoxy compound material and related composites.
OCT does an excellent job of clearly imaging fibre reinforced composites including detection of voids and
heterogeneities (for instance “dry spots”) and fibre microstructure on micrometer scale. X-ray µ-CT is
capable of delivering high resolution images of the reinforcement microstructure of the entire sample and is
not limited in depth like the OCT. However, some types of damage could not be detected clearly.
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