Shearography inspection of monolithic CFRP composites: finite element modeling approach for assessing an adequate strategy of artificial defects representing delamination

Delamination in carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminated composites is an important problem for industry. Nondestructive inspection (NDI) methods aim at locating such defects. Shearography is a full-field NDI method that could be considered to detect them. Reference plates for assessing performances of NDI methods for detecting delamination use artificial defects of several types introduced in reference CFRP matrices. Although they are standardized for usual ultrasound testing, these artifacts are not necessarily adequate for shearography. We have studied this problem by comparing shearography experiment and simulations by finite element analysis. We show the convergence with experiments on the case of flat bottom hole artifacts. Then we discuss the adequateness of other artifacts through simulations.