Investigation of Injection Repair Technique for Non-Visible Damages in Automotive Composites

In recent decades, composite materials have been widely used in several fields. The challenge in recent years has been to find an effective and automatable repair technique for these materials. Low-speed impact tests were carried out on panels made from prepregs in carbon fibre and epoxy resin. An innovative repair technique has been tested by injecting resin into the delamination due to the impact event. After the first impact, some panels were repaired and re-impacted, while others were impacted twice consecutively. The data analysis and damage detection by an ultrasound technique demonstrate that the absorbed energy of the twice-impacted panels is lower than that of the repaired ones, demonstrating a configuration similar to that of the panels impacted only once. The results of this research have demonstrated the effectiveness of the repairs.