Interfacial delamination in glass-fiber/polymer-foam-core sandwich composites using singlemode–multimode–singlemode optical fiber sensors: Identification based on experimental investigation

Identification of interfacial delamination in the glass fiber/polymer-foam-core sandwich composites is difficult if the delamination does not propagate to the side surface of the specimen. However, these damages may eventually lead to compromising the sandwich composite structural component. A cost-effective novel embedded fiber optic sensor is being proposed in this manuscript, which works on the principle of multimode interference, to perform distributed sensing of interfacial delamination within the sandwich composites while in service. Even though this easy to use methodology has been used to identify interfacial delamination, this methodology can also be used for different other types of interfacial/interlaminar distributed strain sensing of samples under mechanical as well as thermal loads.