Carbon Fiber Inspection
Establishing that what was designed is what is actually on the structure.
Delta Structural Technology facilitates specifications, stamped drawings and calculations, quality control and testing. The last of those is a discipline of its own. A composite strengthening system is only worth its design values if the fabric reached them: proper saturation of the fabric into the matrix must be achieved for these materials to develop their designed structural properties, and surface preparation is a critical factor when applying FRP. Inspection is how that gets established rather than assumed.
Inspecting an installed system
- Visual inspection, which is an essential precursor to any intended non-destructive test.
- Acoustic tap testing across the bonded area, to find voids and delamination between the laminate and the substrate.
- Pull-off adhesion testing on the cured system, and on witness panels installed alongside it.
- Review of the installation record against the specification — surface preparation, saturation, ply count and orientation, and cure conditions.
A composite system is only worth its design values if it actually bonded.
And the concrete underneath it
Strengthening goes onto a structure whose own condition has to be known first, and that is the other half of the work. Non-destructive testing covers density, elastic modulus and strength, surface hardness and surface absorption, reinforcement location and its distance from the surface, and the detection of voids, cracking and delamination — with half-cell electrical potential to read the corrosion potential of the reinforcing bars, rebound hammer for surface hardness, and carbonation depth measurement to establish whether moisture has reached the steel.
