Residual interlaminar deformation analysis in the carbon/epoxy composites using micro-moiré interferometry

In this paper, a new micro-moiré interferometer is proposed to measure the residual interlaminar deformation due to the cooled down state of carbon fibre reinforced epoxy composites. The principle of the micro-moiré interferometry method and the measurement techniques are discussed in detail. Some 16-ply laminates with ply orientations of [90°2, 0°2, +45°2, −45°2 were manufactured using carbon fibre reinforced epoxy prepregs. The residual interlaminar deformation in the composite was measured from the moire fringes and the corresponding residual interlaminar strain components εx,εy,γxy were calculated. The experimental results showed that this micro-moiré interferometer can resolve moiré fringes in a range from tens to a few hundreds of a micrometer, and thus this measurement method has great potential in many other areas of application.