Directivity and Excitability of Ultrasonic Shear Waves Using Piezoceramic Transducers-Numerical Modeling and Experimental Investigations.

In this paper, piezoceramic-based excitation of shear horizontal waves is investigated. A thickness-shear d15 piezoceramic transducer is modeled using the finite-element method. The major focus is on the directivity and excitability of the shear horizontal fundamental mode with respect to the maximization of excited shear and minimization of Lamb wave modes. The results show that the geometry of the transducer has more effect on the directivity than on the excitability of the analyzed actuator. Numerically simulated results are validated experimentally. The experimental results show that transducer bonding significantly affects the directivity and amplitude of the excited modes. In conclusion, when the selected actuator is used for shear excitation, the best solution is to tailor the transducer in such a way that at the resonant frequency the desired directivity is achieved.

Damage Detection in Glass Fibre Composites Using Cointegrated Hyperspectral Images.

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is a remote sensing technique that has been successfully applied for the task of damage detection in glass fibre-reinforced plastic (GFRP) materials. Similarly to other vision-based detection methods, one of the drawbacks of HSI is its susceptibility to the lighting conditions during the imaging, which is a serious issue for gathering hyperspectral data in real-life scenarios. In this study, a data conditioning procedure is proposed for improving the results of damage detection with various classifiers. The developed procedure is based on the concept of signal stationarity and cointegration analysis, and achieves its goal by performing the detection and removal of the non-stationary trends in hyperspectral images caused by imperfect lighting. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method, two damage detection tests have been performed on a damaged GFRP specimen: one using the proposed method, and one using an established damage detection workflow, based on the works of other authors. Application of the proposed procedure in the processing of a hyperspectral image of a damaged GFRP specimen resulted in significantly improved accuracy, sensitivity, and F-score, independently of the type of classifier used.

Fatigue-Crack Detection in a Multi-Riveted Strap-Joint Aluminium Aircraft Panel Using Amplitude Characteristics of Diffuse Lamb Wave Field.

Structural health monitoring of riveted aircraft panels is a real challenge for maintenance engineers. Here, a diffused Lamb wave field is used for fatigue-crack detection in a multi-riveted strap-joint aircraft panel. The panel is instrumented with a network of low-profile surface-bonded piezoceramic transducers. Various amplitude characteristics of Lamb waves are used to extract information on fatigue damage. A statistical outlier analysis based on these characteristics is also performed to detect damage. The experimental work is supported by simplified modelling of wave scattering from crack tips to explain complex response features. The Local Interaction Simulation Approach (LISA) is used for this modelling task. The results demonstrate the potential and limitations of the method for reliable fatigue-crack detection in complex aircraft components.

The Study of Localized Crack-Induced Effects of Nonlinear Vibro-Acoustic Modulation.

The nonlinear interaction of longitudinal vibration and ultrasound in beams with cracks is investigated. The central focus is on the localization effect of this interaction, i.e., the locally enhanced nonlinear vibro-acoustic modulation. Both numerical and experimental investigations are undertaken. The finite element (FE) method is used to investigate different crack models, including the bi-linear crack, open crack, and breathing crack. A parametric study is performed considering different crack depths, locations, and boundary conditions in a two-dimensional beam model. The study shows that observed nonlinearities (i.e., nonlinear crack-wave modulations) are particularly strong in the vicinity of the crack, allowing not only for crack localization but also for the separation of the crack-induced nonlinearity from other sources of nonlinearity.

Lamb Wave Based Structural Damage Detection Using Stationarity Tests.

Lamb waves have been widely used for structural damage detection. However, practical applications of this technique are still limited. One of the main reasons is due to the complexity of Lamb wave propagation modes. Therefore, instead of directly analysing and interpreting Lamb wave propagation modes for information about health conditions of the structure, this study has proposed another approach that is based on statistical analyses of the stationarity of Lamb waves. The method is validated by using Lamb wave data from intact and damaged aluminium plates exposed to temperature variations. Four popular unit root testing methods, including Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test, Kwiatkowski-Phillips-Schmidt-Shin (KPSS) test, Phillips-Perron (PP) test, and Leybourne-McCabe (LM) test, have been investigated and compared in order to understand and make statistical inference about the stationarity of Lamb wave data before and after hole damages are introduced to the aluminium plate. The separation between t-statistic features, obtained from the unit root tests on Lamb wave data, is used for damage detection. The results show that both ADF test and KPSS test can detect damage, while both PP and LM tests were not significant for identifying damage. Moreover, the ADF test was more stable with respect to temperature changes than the KPSS test. However, the KPSS test can detect damage better than the ADF test. Moreover, both KPSS and ADF tests can consistently detect damages in conditions where temperatures vary below 60 °C. However, their t-statistics fluctuate more (or less homogeneous) for temperatures higher than 65 °C. This suggests that both ADF and KPSS tests should be used together for Lamb wave based structural damage detection. The proposed stationarity-based approach is motivated by its simplicity and efficiency. Since the method is based on the concept of stationarity of a time series, it can find applications not only in Lamb wave based SHM but also in condition monitoring and fault diagnosis of industrial systems.

Wavelet-based analysis of time-variant adaptive structures.

Wavelet analysis is applied to identify the time-variant dynamics of adaptive structures. The wavelet-based power spectrum of the structural response, wavelet-based frequency response function (FRF) and wavelet-based coherence are used to identify continuously and abruptly varying natural frequencies. A cantilever plate with surface-bonded macro fibre composite-which alters the structural stiffness-is used to demonstrate the application of the methods. The results show that the wavelet-based input-output characteristics-i.e. the FRF and coherence-can identify correctly the dynamics of the analysed time-variant system and reveal the varying natural frequency. The wavelet-based coherence can be used not only for the assessment of the quality of the wavelet-based FRF but also for the identification.This article is part of the theme issue 'Redundancy rules: the continuous wavelet transform comes of age'.

Modelling nonlinearity of guided ultrasonic waves in fatigued materials using a nonlinear local interaction simulation approach and a spring model.

Modelling and numerical simulation - based on the framework of the Local Interaction Simulation Approach - was developed to have more insight into nonlinear attributes of guided ultrasonic waves propagating in fatigued metallic materials. Various sources of nonlinearity were considered in this modelling work, with particular emphases on higher-order harmonic generation and accumulation of nonlinearity along wave propagation. The material hyper-elasticity was considered in the model using an energy density approach based on the Landau-Lifshitz formulation; and the "breathing" motion pattern of a fatigue crack in the material was interrogated using a spring model. Upon the successful validation with the model prepared in the commercial software based on the Finite Element Methods, two scenarios were comparatively investigated, i.e. the lower and higher frequency regime. In the first case propagation of a basic symmetric mode pair was simulated using the model to observe a cumulative characteristic of the second harmonic mode with nonlinear hyper-elastic material definition upon appropriate selection of excitation frequency. In the second case, the higher-order symmetric mode pair was excited according to the "internal resonance" conditions, revealing a strong dependence of manifested nonlinearity on numerical parameters. Moreover, it was shown that with the use of the wave from the low frequency regime it was easier to differentiate later stages of the crack development, being in contrary to waves in the high frequency regime, which allowed to clearly observe early stages of the crack expansion. Such outcome lays the foundation to develop the damage detection and monitoring scheme in the field of Structural Health Monitoring based on utilising the nonlinear features of guided ultrasonic waves.

Amplitude-dependent Lamb wave dispersion in nonlinear plates.

The paper presents a perturbation approach for calculating amplitude-dependent Lamb wave dispersion in nonlinear plates. Nonlinear dispersion relationships are derived in closed form using a hyperelastic stress-strain constitutive relationship, the Green-Lagrange strain measure, and the partial wave technique integrated with a Lindstedt-Poincaré perturbation approach. Solvability conditions are derived using an operator formalism with inner product projections applied against solutions to the adjoint problem. When applied to the first- and second-order problems, these solvability conditions lead to amplitude-dependent, nonlinear dispersion corrections for frequency as a function of wavenumber. Numerical simulations verify the predicted dispersion shifts for an example nonlinear plate. The analysis and identification of amplitude-dependent, nonlinear Lamb wave dispersion complements recent research focusing on higher harmonic generation and internally resonant waves, which require precise dispersion relationships for frequency-wavenumber matching.

Time-distance domain transformation for Acoustic Emission source localization in thin metallic plates.

Acoustic Emission used in Non-Destructive Testing is focused on analysis of elastic waves propagating in mechanical structures. Then any information carried by generated acoustic waves, further recorded by a set of transducers, allow to determine integrity of these structures. It is clear that material properties and geometry strongly impacts the result. In this paper a method for Acoustic Emission source localization in thin plates is presented. The approach is based on the Time-Distance Domain Transform, that is a wavenumber-frequency mapping technique for precise event localization. The major advantage of the technique is dispersion compensation through a phase-shifting of investigated waveforms in order to acquire the most accurate output, allowing for source-sensor distance estimation using a single transducer. The accuracy and robustness of the above process are also investigated. This includes the study of Young's modulus value and numerical parameters influence on damage detection. By merging the Time-Distance Domain Transform with an optimal distance selection technique, an identification-localization algorithm is achieved. The method is investigated analytically, numerically and experimentally. The latter involves both laboratory and large scale industrial tests.

Generalized semi-analytical finite difference method for dispersion curves calculation and numerical dispersion analysis for Lamb waves.

The paper presents an efficient and accurate method for dispersion curve calculation and analysis of numerical models for guided waves. The method can be used for any arbitrarily selected anisotropic material. The proposed approach utilizes the wave equation and through-thickness-only discretization of anisotropic, layered plates to obtain the Lamb wave characteristics. Thus, layered structures, such as composites, can be analyzed in a straightforward manner. A general framework for the proposed analysis is given, along with application examples. Although these examples are based on the local interaction simulation approach for elastic waves propagation, the proposed methodology can be easily adopted for other methods (e.g., finite elements). The method can be also used to study the influence of discretization parameters on dispersion curves estimates.

Time-frequency and time-scale analyses for structural health monitoring.

Signal processing is one of the most important elements of structural health monitoring. This paper documents applications of time-variant analysis for damage detection. Two main approaches, the time-frequency and the time-scale analyses are discussed. The discussion is illustrated by application examples relevant to damage detection.