New Neural Network to Detect Damage in Composite Materials

A Mesh Graph Network (MGN) framework with fiber optic sensors identifies and locates structural damage in flat composite laminates.

Digital representation of a composite laminate structure with a mesh and sensor nodes.
AI

Digital representation of a composite laminate structure with a mesh and sensor nodes.

Researchers have developed an innovative Mesh Graph Network (MGN)-based framework that uses Optical Fiber Sensors (OFS) to detect the existence, localization, severity, and extension of structural damage in flat composite laminates.

The system discretizes the composite panel into regular Cartesian grids, connecting mesh nodes to represent spatial continuity. Sensor nodes are integrated using a K-nearest neighbor (KNN) strategy to the nearest mesh nodes.
A relative signal profile (r), calculated from the strain responses of the damaged structure compared to the healthy one (baseline), is generated through a finite element (FE) model and used as input to train the proposed MGN model.
The model was trained independently with two datasets: one for large damage regions and another for small damage regions. Results demonstrated reliable damage prediction in extensive damage scenarios, even with multiple regions, despite being trained exclusively on single-damage configurations.
Cross-material validation also showed the model's ability to generalize to other composite systems. However, the performance of the model retrained with data from a single small damage area substantially decreases when applied to scenarios with two small damage areas, although it can provide reasonable results for previously unseen single-small damage cases.
Based on information from the official source: IMDEA Materiales (05/10/2026)