Removing the Ambiguity in Lamb Wave-Based Damage Localization

The aim of this work is the investigation and improvement of a Structural Health Monitoring method based on Lamb waves propagation. This research concentrates on ambiguity in damage localization using attached piezoelectric transducers as sources and sensors of the elastic waves. A linear phased array is chosen as a starting point of the investigation. It has a great advantage in damage localization, namely it enables to amplify the wave reflected from damage, increasing the signal to noise ratio, and precisely indicates not only the distance to damage from the array but also the direction on which the damage lies. However it has also a great disadvantage which needs to be handled – the localization results are symmetric in relation to the line on which the transducers of linear phased array are placed. This obviously does not facilitate Structural Health Monitoring process and precise indication of damage placement. Therefore this investigation aims to improve this localization method by removing the ambiguity in results. In this work the placement of transducers forming a linear phased array is modified to achieve this goal. Several array modification are investigated and compared in order to determine the best solution. Presented research is based on theoretical calculations as well as laboratory experiments on prepared specimens. The measurements are conducted with a compact 13–channel SHM system controlled by a MATLAB® script.