In recent years, the use of composite structures in engineering application has increased. This is mainly due to their special advantages such as high structural performance, high corrosion resistance, tolerance of temperature; extreme fatigue resistance and high strength/weight ratio. However, some disorders like fibre breakage, matrix cracking and delaminations could be caused by operational loading, aging, chemical attack, mechanical vibration, changing of ambient conditions and shock etc. during the service. Although these disorders are hardly visible, they can severely reduce the mechanical properties and the load carrying capability of the composite structure. The aim of this research project is to develop a Vibration-based Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) method for carbon/epoxy composite beam specimens with the embedded artificial delaminations. The Laser Vibrometer Machine was used to excite the beams and gather the responses of the structure to the excitations. The physical properties such as frequency, velocity, mode shapes, and damping of the defective beams were measured. By using a C-SCAN machine, the accuracy of the positions of the delaminations was verified to be about 95% is accurate. Curvature mode shapes as a scalable damage detection parameter is calculated using an analytical model based on the Heaviside step function and the Central Difference Approximation (CDA) technique. The vibration-based damage detection method is then obtained using the difference between curvature mode shapes of the intact and damaged carbon/epoxy beams. An accurate prediction of 90% was attained. These results are proposed and discussed in detail in this study. Finally, the Fatigue Crack Propagation Test was applied on Samples with embedded delamination to extend the crack. The ASTM E399-90 standard is used for the experiment and a careful fatigue crack growth routine was designed and implemented to advance the delamination in a controlled manner. The total extension of 17 mm was observed with Microscope. The total propagation as determined by the curvature mode plots was 17.84 mm
