Damage localization in composite structures with smoothly varying thickness based on the fundamental antisymmetric adiabatic wave mode

Jochen Moll

doi:10.1016/j.ultras.2016.06.002

Damage localization in composite structures with smoothly varying thickness based on the fundamental antisymmetric adiabatic wave mode

Ultrasonics. 2016 Sep:71:111-114. doi: 10.1016/j.ultras.2016.06.002. Epub 2016 Jun 7.

Author

Jochen Moll¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Physics, Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main, Max-von-Laue-Str. 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Electronic address: moll@physik.uni-frankfurt.de.

PMID: 27317966
DOI: 10.1016/j.ultras.2016.06.002

Abstract

This work is based on the experimental observation that the phase and group velocity of the fundamental antisymmetric wave mode in a composite structure with linearly varying thickness changes as it propagates along the nonuniform waveguide (Moll et al., 2015). This adiabatic wave motion leads to systematic damage localization errors of conventional algorithms because a constant wave velocity is assumed in the reconstruction process. This paper presents a generalized beamforming approach for composite structures with nonuniform cross section that eliminates this systematic error. Damage localization results will be presented and discussed in comparison to existing techniques.

Keywords: Adiabatic waves; Damage localization; Nonuniform waveguides; Structural health monitoring.