Adaptive boosting (AdaBoost) algorithms fuse multiple weak classifiers to generate a strong classifier by adaptively determining the fusion weights of the weak classifiers. According to incorrect or correct classification results, sample weights become larger or smaller. However, this weight update scheme neglects valuable information in the results. Moreover, an important requirement for weak classifiers is an accuracy higher than random guessing. This requirement is likely to lead to an unexpected result. This means that several generated weak classifiers with similar classification results cannot learn from each other. Consequently, the advantage of fusing multiple weak classifiers disappears. The classification and therefore distinction of different failure modes in materials is a typical task for classical nondestructive testing approaches as well as for new approaches based on machine learning methods. In the case different approaches can be applied, the main question is, which and how tuned approaches provide the best results in terms of accuracy or similar metrics. In the multi-damage classification task distinguishing different physical failure mechanisms in Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP), the above two aspects complicate the application of AdaBoost algorithms. To improve the results, a novel AdaBoost with distance-based weighted least square support vector machine (WLSSVM) and filter factor is proposed. The distance-based WLSSVM is employed to increase the diversity of weak classifiers, the distances of the classification plane and samples are used to measure the classification task. The filter factor is proposed to filter out unnecessary classifiers contributing less to the final decision. The experimental results demonstrate that the improved AdaBoost schemes with distance-based WLSSVM and filter factor outperform state-of-the-art algorithms. The effects of the scheme using the new weighted update and the filter factor on the algorithm are discussed, respectively. The experimental results show that the combination of the two schemes perform better than other schemes.