Transmitted light microscopy of a fibre reinforced metal

MOSER, B.
ROSSOLL, A.
WEBER, L.
BEFFORT, O.
MORTENSEN, A.

^*Laboratory for Mechanical Metallurgy, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
^†Section Materials Technology, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, EMPA, Thun, Switzerland

Correspondence: B. Moser, LEXCOM, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA. Tel.: +1 617 253 9825; fax: +1 617 258 0390; e-mail: [email protected]

Received 30 July 2002; accepted 28 October 2002

Journal of Microscopy 209(1):p 8-12, January 2003.

Summary

A method is presented for studying fibre damage in continuous fibre reinforced composites. It is based on contrasting the transmission of light through intact translucent fibres with the light through fractured or dead-ended fibres. The method is applied in order to detect processing-induced fibre fractures in aluminium reinforced with continuous alumina fibres.