The acoustic emission method has been adopted for detection of damage mechanisms in carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer composite tubes during the three-point bending test. The damage evolution process of the individual samples has been monitored using the acoustic emission method, which is one of the non-destructive methods. The obtained data were then subjected to a two-step technique, which combines the unsupervised pattern recognition approach utilizing the short-time frequency spectra with the boundary curve enabling the already clustered data to be additionally filtered. The boundary curve identification has been carried out on the basis of preliminary tensile tests of the carbon fiber sheafs, where, by overlapping the force versus time dependency by the acoustic emission activity versus time dependency, it was possible to identify the boundary which will separate the signals originating from the fiber break from unwanted secondary sources. The application of the presented two-step method resulted in the identification of the failure mechanisms such as matrix cracking, fiber break, decohesion, and debonding. Besides the comparison of the results with already published research papers, the study presents the comprehensive parametric acoustic emission signal analysis of the individual clusters.

The characterisation of failure mechanisms in carbon fibre-reinforced polymer (CFRP) materials using the acoustic emission (AE) technique has been the topic of a number of publications. However, it is often challenging to obtain comprehensive and reliable information about individual failure mechanisms. This situation was the impetus for elaborating a comprehensive overview that covers all failure mechanisms within the framework of CFRP materials. Thus, we performed tensile and compact tension tests on specimens with various stacking sequences to induce specific failure modes and mechanisms. The AE activity was monitored using two different wideband AE sensors and further analysed using a hybrid AE hit detection process. The datasets received from both sensors were separately subjected to clustering analysis using the spectral clustering technique, which incorporated an unsupervised k-means clustering algorithm. The failure mechanism analysis also included a proposed filtering process based on the power distribution across the considered frequency range, with which it was possible to distinguish between the fibre pull-out and fibre breakage mechanisms. This functionality was particularly useful in cases where it was evident that the above-mentioned damage mechanisms exhibited very similar parametric characteristics. The results of the clustering analysis were compared to those of the scanning electron microscopy analysis, which confirmed the conclusions of the AE data analysis.

Guided waves, especially Lamb waves or shear-horizontal waves, are widely used types of waves for ultrasonic inspection of large structures. Well known property of guided waves is their dispersive character, which means that the propagation velocity of the particular wave mode is not only a function of physical properties of the material, in which the wave propagates or the wave´s frequency, but also depends on the geometry of the structure in itself. Dispersion curves provide us the information related to the dependency between the wavenumber and the frequency of the particular mode and can be obtained by a numerical solution of Rayleigh-Lamb frequency equation. A solution of Rayleigh-Lamb frequency equation forms for a given frequency and plate thickness a set of a finite number of real and pure imaginary wavenumbers and an infinite number of complex wavenumbers. Proposed paper presents a complete procedure of how to obtain all three kinds of wavenumbers for a given geometry and frequency interval. The main emphasis is placed on the effectiveness of the procedures, which are used for finding the roots of dispersion equation for all three kinds of wavenumbers.

The main aim of the presented paper is to show how heat treatment, in our case the induction hardening, will affect the wear rates as well as the ratcheting evolution process beneath the contact surface in the field of line rolling contact. Used wear model is based on shear band cracking mechanism [1] and non-linear kinematic and isotropic hardening rule of Chaboche and Lemaitre. The entire numerical simulations have been realized in the C# programming language. Results from numerical simulations are subsequently compared with experimental data.

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