A Power-Equivalence-Based Computational Method for Homogenized Equivalent Conductivity of Laminated Composites

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors
Siyuan Han 1
Guoqiang Yu 1
Xiguang Gao 1
Chenggang Li 2
Yingdong Song 1 , 3
1 Key Laboratory of Aero-engine Thermal Environment and Structure, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, College of Energy and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, P.R. China
2 Taihang National Laboratory, Chengdu 610504, P.R. China
3 Harbin Engineering University, Harbin, 150001, P.R. China
10.22055/jacm.2026.48780.5495
Abstract
Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) has been widely applied in recent years for damage monitoring in composite materials, particularly in laminated plates. The prevailing approach in ERT-based laminate monitoring simplifies the analysis by treating composites as orthotropic materials, which contain solely 0° and 90° oriented layers. However, this orthotropic assumption becomes invalid for actual composite layups with arbitrary ply orientations. To address this problem, this paper proposes a homogenized equivalent conductivity calculation method for laminated composites based on power equivalence. This method enables solving equivalent conductivity for laminates with arbitrary layup configurations, thereby allowing substitution of the original layered model with a homogenized plate model. Comparative FEM analyses of various laminate configurations confirm that the boundary voltage distributions obtained using the homogenized conductivity model match the actual layered structure results within 1.2% mean absolute error.
Keywords
Structural health monitoring
Laminated composite
Equivalent conductivity
Electrical resistivity tomography
Subjects

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Journal of Applied and Computational Mechanics

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Available Online from 24 March 2026