Smart composite materials and their damage assessment system

The smart composite structures have not only the ability of load-bearing, but also the ability of detecting the operating states of the structures through a neural network system which is composed of optical fibers and is embedded in the composite structures beforehand. In this paper, the working principle and the prospects of their applications of two types of damage-monitoring-systems, the fiber optical sensor array (FOSA) and acoustic emission sensor array (AESA) systems, are introduced and reviewed in detail.