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This study conducted experimental and numerical investigations on piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWASs) bonded to an aluminum plate to assess the impact of bonding degradation on Lamb wave generation. Three surface-bonded PWASs were examined, including one intentionally bonded with a reduced adhesive to create a defective bond. Thermal cyclic aging was applied, monitoring through laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV) and static capacitance measurements. The PWAS with the initially defective bond exhibited the poorest performance over aging cycles, emphasizing the significance of the initial bond condition. As debonding progressed, modifications in electromechanical behavior were observed, leading to a reduction in wave amplitude and distortion of the generated wave field, challenging the validity of existing analytical modeling of wave-tuning curves for perfectly bonded PWASs. Both numerical simulations and experimental observations substantiated this finding. In conclusion, this study highlights the imperative of a high-integrity bond for the proper functioning of a guided wave-based structural health monitoring (SHM) system, emphasizing ongoing challenges in assessing SHM performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corrosion detection for industrial settings is crucial for safe and efficient operations. Due to its high imaging resolution, the guided–wave full–waveform inversion tomography technique has significant potential for corrosion detection of plate metals. Limited by the long wavelengths of A0 and S0 mode waves, this method exhibits inadequate detection resolution for the earlier shallow and small corrosion defects. Based on the relatively short wavelength characteristics of the SH1 mode wave, we propose a high–precision corrosion detection method via SH1 guided wave using the full waveform inversion algorithms. By conducting finite element simulations of ultrasonic–guided waves on aluminum plates with varying corrosion defects, a comparison was made to assess the detection precision across A0, S0, and SH1 modes. The comparison results showed that, whether for regular or irregular defects, the SH1 mode wave always exhibited higher imaging accuracy than the A0 and S0 mode waves for shallow and small–sized defects. The corresponding experiments were conducted on an aluminum plate with simple or complex defects. The results of the experiments reconfirmed that the full waveform inversion method using SH1 guided wave can effectively reconstruct the shape and size of small and shallow corrosion defects within aluminum plates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Lamb waves have found extensive use in structural damage detection, their practical applications remain limited. This limitation primarily arises from the intricate nature of Lamb wave propagation modes and the effect of temperature variations. Therefore, rather than directly inspecting and interpreting Lamb wave responses for insights into the structural health, this study proposes a novel approach, based on a two-step cointegration-based computation procedure, for structural damage evaluation using Lamb wave data represented as time series that exhibit some common trends. The first step involves the composition of Lamb wave series sharing a common upward (or downward) trend of temperature. In the second step, the cointegration analysis is applied for each group of Lamb wave series, which represents a certain condition of damage. So, a cointegration analysis model of Lamb wave series is created for each damage condition. The geometrical and statistical features of Lamb wave series and cointegration residual series are used for detecting and distinguishing damage conditions. These features include the shape, peak-to-peak amplitude, and variance of the series. The validity of this method is confirmed through its application to the Lamb wave data collected from both undamaged and damaged aluminium plates subjected to temperature fluctuations. The proposed approach can find its application not only in Lamb wave-based damage detection, but also in other structural health monitoring (SHM) systems where the data can be arranged in the form of sharing common environmental and/or operational trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a new method for determining the elastic constants of isotropic plates using Lamb wave fundamental modes is presented. This method solves the inverse problem, where the elastic constants (Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio) of the plate were estimated by measuring the phase velocities of the Lamb wave using the Rayleigh–Lamb equations to find the solution and determining the phase velocities of the A0 and S0 modes using a new method. The suitability of the proposed method for determining the elastic constants was evaluated using simulated and experimental signals propagating on an aluminum plate. The theoretical modeling on the aluminum 7075-T6 plate shows that the proposed method allows the determination of the Poisson ratio with a relative error not exceeding 2% and Young's modulus with a relative error not exceeding 0.5%. The experimental measurements of an aluminum plate of known thickness (2 mm) and density (2685 kg/m3) confirmed the suitability of the proposed method for the measurements of elastic constants. In the proposed method, the processing of ultrasonic signals can be performed in real-time, and the values of the elastic constants can be obtained immediately after scanning the required distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nonlinear ultrasonic evaluation technique is useful for assessing micro-defects and microstructure changes caused by fatigue or bending damage. In particular, the guided wave is advantageous for long-distance testing such as piping and plate. Despite these advantages, the study of nonlinear guided wave propagation has received relatively less attention compared to bulk wave techniques. Furthermore, there is a lack of research on the correlation between nonlinear parameters and material properties. In this study, the relationship between nonlinear parameters and plastic deformation resulting from bending damage was experimentally investigated using Lamb waves. The findings indicated an increase in the nonlinear parameter for the specimen, which was loaded within the elastic limit. Inversely, regions of maximum deflection in specimens with plastic deformation exhibited a decrease in the nonlinear parameter. This research is expected to be helpful for maintenance technology in the nuclear power plant and aerospace fields that require high reliability and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of the wavelength difference between the laser source and the phase-shifted fiber Bragg grating (PS-FBG) on the intensity of the power demodulation system based on an adjustable laser source was studied experimentally, and the optimum of the output laser wavelength was determined. Then, the research on time-frequency imaging damage identification based on smooth pseudo-Wigner-Ville distribution was carried out. The Time of Flight of the acoustic wave signal was calculated and time compensation was made according to the Wigner-Ville distribution and the Lamb wave dispersion curve. The ultrasonic waves before and after damage were measured with spatially arranged PS-FBGs. The difference signals were processed in a window, and then the time-frequency energy of the normalized difference signal was imaged to assess the damage detection and location. Although the mode and group velocity of ultrasound measured by each fiber grating were different, the accurate location and identification of artificial damage in an aluminum alloy plate was realized by using only three PS-FBGs and a smooth Wigner time-frequency imaging method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of non-stationary Lamb wave signals is a promising tool in various industrial applications where information about changes inside a structure is required. Phase velocity is one of the Lamb wave parameters that can be used for inhomogeneities detection. The possibility of reconstructing the segment of the phase velocity in a strong dispersion range using only two signals is proposed. The theoretical study is performed using signals of the A0 mode propagating in an aluminium plate at a frequency of 150 kHz, 300 kHz, 500 kHz and 900 kHz. The experiment was carried out at a value of 300 kHz. The studies conducted indicated that the maximum distance between two signals, at which the time-of-flight can be measured between the same phase points, is the main parameter for the two signals technique application. Theoretical and experimental studies were performed, and the mean relative error was calculated by comparing the obtained results with those calculated via the SAFE method. In the theoretical study, the mean relative error of 0.33% was obtained at 150 kHz, 0.22% at 300 kHz, 0.23% at 500 kHz and 0.11% at 900 kHz. The calculated mean relative errors δ c p h = 0.91 % and δ c p h = 1.36 % were obtained at different distances in the experimental study. The results obtained show that the estimation of the phase velocity in dispersion ranges using only two received signals was a useful tool that saved time and effort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided acoustic waves (GAW) have proven to be a useful tool for structural health monitoring (SHM). However, the dispersive nature of commonly used Lamb waves compromises the spatial resolution making it difficult to detect small or weakly reflective defects. Here we demonstrate an approach that can compensate for the dispersive effects, allowing advanced algorithms to be used with significantly higher signal-to-noise ratio and spatial resolution. In this paper, the sign coherence factor (SCF) extension of the total focusing method (TFM) algorithm is used. The effectiveness is examined by numerical simulation and experimentally demonstrated by detecting weakly reflective layers with a highly dispersive A0 mode on an aluminum plate, which are not detectable without compensating for the dispersion effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most imaging methods based on ultrasonic Lamb waves in structural health monitoring requires reference signals, recorded in the intact state. This paper focuses on a novel baseline-free method for damage localization using Lamb waves based on a hyperbolic algorithm. This method employs a special array with a relatively small number of transducers and only one branch of the hyperbola. The novel symmetrical array was arranged on plate structures to eliminate the direct waves. The time difference between the received signals at symmetrical sensors was obtained from the damage-scattered waves. The sequence of time difference for constructing the hyperbolic trajectory was calculated by the cross-correlation method. Numerical simulation and experimental measurements were implemented on an aluminum plate with a through-thickness hole in the current state. The imaging results show that both the damages outside and inside the diamond-shaped arrays can be localized, and the positioning error reaches the maximum for the diamond-shaped array with the minimum size. The results indicate that the position of the through-hole in the aluminum plate can be identified and localized by the proposed baseline-free method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a damage detection technique based on the automatic classification of the Lamb wave signals acquired on a metallic plate. In the reported experiments, Lamb waves are excited in an aluminum plate through a piezoelectric transducer glued onto the monitored structure. The response of the monitored structure is detected through a high-resolution phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometer (ϕ-OTDR). The presence and location of a small perturbation, induced by placing a lumped mass of 5 g on the plate, are determined by processing the optical fiber sensor data through support vector machine (SVM) classifiers trained with experimental data. The results show that the proposed method takes full advantage of the multipoint sensing nature of the ϕ-OTDR technology, resulting in accurate damage detection and localization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates that a graded-index (GRIN) phononic lens, combined with a channel waveguide, can focus anti-symmetric Lamb waves for extraction by a detector with strong directional sensitivity. Guided ultrasonic wave inspection is commonly applied for structural health monitoring applications; however, obtaining sufficient signal amplitude is a challenge. In addition, fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors have strong directional sensitivity. We fabricate the GRIN structure, followed by a channel waveguide starting at the focal point, using a commercial 3D printer and mount it on a thin aluminum plate. We characterize the focusing of the A0 mode Lamb wave in the plate, traveling across the GRIN lens using 3D laser Doppler vibrometry. We also measure the extraction of focused energy using an FBG sensor, examining the optimal sensor bond location and bond length in the channel of the waveguide for maximum signal extraction. The measured amplification of the ultrasound signal is compared to theoretical predictions. The results demonstrate that significant amplification of the waveform is achieved and that selecting the location of the FBG sensor in the channel is critical to optimizing the amplification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2D-FFT is described as a traditional method for signal processing and analysis. Due to the possibility to determine the time and frequency (t,f) domains, such a method has a wide application in various industrial fields. Using that method, the obtained results are presented in images only; thus, for the extraction of quantitative values of phase velocities, additional algorithms should be used. In this work, the 2D-FFT method is presented, which is based on peak detection of the spectrum magnitude at particular frequencies for obtaining the quantitative expressions. The radiofrequency signals of ULWs (ultrasonic Lamb waves) were used for the accuracy evaluation of the method. An uncertainty evaluation was conducted to guarantee the metrological traceability of measurement results and ensure that they are accurate and reliable. Mathematical and experimental verifications were conducted by using signals of Lamb waves propagating in the aluminum plate. The obtained mean relative error of 0.12% for the A0 mode (160 kHz) and 0.05% for the S0 mode (700 kHz) during the mathematical verification indicated that the proposed method is particularly suitable for evaluating the phase-velocity dispersion in clearly expressed dispersion zones. The uncertainty analysis showed that the plate thickness, the mathematical modeling, and the step of the scanner have a significant impact on the estimated uncertainty of the phase velocity for the A0 mode. Those components of uncertainty prevail and make about ~92% of the total standard uncertainty in a clearly expressed dispersion range. The S0 mode analysis in the non-dispersion zone indicates that the repeatability of velocity variations, fluctuations of the frequency of Lamb waves, and the scanning step of the scanner influence significantly the combined uncertainty and represent 98% of the total uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imaging method based on the conventional phased array (PA) can only realize angle focusing. To break through the above limitations, frequency diverse array (FDA) is first introduced from radar to Lamb wave, which opens up a possibility to realize angle–range focusing in damage localization. The energy pattern of FDA without considering the features of radar signals is re-derived, and a corresponding FDA focusing imaging method for Lamb wave is developed. In the presented method, by appending various frequency offsets to the redesigned anti-dispersive excitations, the desired FDA focusing and the dispersion elimination for Lamb wave are achieved simultaneously. Furthermore, based on full matrix capture being the data acquisition approach, a novel total focusing is realized with comprehensive consideration of positive and negative frequency offsets. Benefiting from FDA focusing, compared with the PA methods, the proposed method exhibits superior adjacent defects’ identification ability and preferable interference suppression capability with excellent location accuracy and strong parameter robustness. Its superiority is validated by the experiment on aluminum plate with multiple adjoining surface and inner defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the active ultrasonic method is an attractive structural health monitoring (SHM) technology, many practical issues such as weight of transducers and cables, energy consumption, reliability and cost of implementation are restraining its application. To overcome these challenges, an active ultrasonic SHM technology enabled by a direct-write transducer (DWT) array and edge computing process is proposed in this work. The operation feasibility of the monitoring function is demonstrated with Lamb wave excited and detected by a linear DWT array fabricated in situ from piezoelectric P(VDF-TrFE) polymer coating on an aluminum alloy plate with a simulated defect. The DWT array features lightweight, small profile, high conformability, and implementation scalability, whilst the edge-computing circuit dedicatedly designed for the active ultrasonic SHM is able to perform signal processing at the sensor nodes before wirelessly transmitting the data to a remote host device. The successful implementation of edge-computing processes is able to greatly decrease the amount of data to be transferred by 331 times and decrease the total energy consumption for the wireless module by 224 times. The results and analyses show that the combination of the piezoelectric DWT and edge-computing process provides a promising technical solution for realizing practical wireless active ultrasonic SHM system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents a method to determine the type of Lamb mode (antisymmetric or symmetric) that propagates through a lithium-ion pouch cell. To determine the type of mode and the group velocity at a specific frequency, two- and three-transducer setups were created. For these setups, it is important that all transducers have the same polarization direction. Two transducers are affixed to the center of the cell at a distance of several centimeters from each other so that the group velocity can be determined. Using cross-correlation, the group velocity of the emerging mode can be calculated. The measurement setup and the processing method was first validated with experiments on acrylic glass and aluminum plates. The measurements were supported with FEM simulations and a numerically calculated model. The output voltages of the receiving piezo-elements obtained in the FEM simulation are in agreement with the underlying theories. The phase shift, which results from the output voltage of the piezo-elements mounted one above the other on different sides of the plate, shows the type of mode. The results of the experimental determination of the Lamb mode that propagates through a lithium-ion pouch cell were validated with a numerically calculated multi-layer model and therefore validate this novel experimental approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Lamb-wave-based damage imaging via beamforming techniques, which can visualize the location of damage in the structure intuitively, is one of the most promising methods in the field of structural health monitoring (SHM). However, transducer array position errors are inevitable in practical application, which may lead to serious degradation in imaging performance. In this study, it is shown that the uncertainty of the steering vectors led by the imprecise position of transducers in an array can be suppressed by the doubly constrained robust Capon beamformer (DCRCB). After the unwanted side lobes are restrained by the DCRCB-based coherence factor (CF) weighting, an effective adaptive beamforming damage imaging method robust to transducer position errors is proposed. The numerical simulation and imaging experiment of damage on an aluminum plate are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. The results show that the proposed Lamb wave damage imaging method performs better than the reported beamforming ones in literature in terms of resolution, contrast, and robustness to transducer position errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, dispersion curve estimation of a bonded aluminum plate is carried out by proposing a specific signal processing procedure. In this proposed method, the angle beam ultrasonic transducer measurement system in a pitch-catch configuration is used to acquire Lamb wave signals from two adjacent positions. The obtained signals are processed then by using signal processing techniques, including bandpass filters, fast Fourier transform (FFT), and bandpass Gaussian filters. Various transmitted signals with different central frequencies are used to estimate four modes of the utilized bonded specimen for frequencies less than 1 MHz. The dispersion curve results in terms of phase velocity and wavenumbers are compared with theoretical dispersion curves and 2-D FFT. This comparison is carried out by using three different metrics, which shows the maximum mean relative error of 3.46% with low variance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Determining Lamb wave dispersion curves when measuring phase and group velocity values at a fixed frequency is now a common and relevant task. In most cases, in order to solve such a problem, it is necessary to know the exact properties of the material, particularly its thickness. In experimental methods, Lamb wave parameters are evaluated directly from the test materials. This paper proposes a new and simple experimental algorithm for A0 mode group and phase velocity determination based on signal filtering and zero-crossing estimating. The main idea is to capture the zero-crossing instances of the signals closest to the signal envelope peaks and use these time instances to determine the phase and group velocities. The reliability of the proposed method was evaluated using simulated and experimental signals propagating in an aluminum plate. Theoretical modeling has shown that the proposed method enables the calculation of the A0 mode group and phase velocities with a mean relative error of less than 0.7%. An accuracy of 0.8% was observed during the experimental measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fatigue damage and micro-cracks growth have been proved to be closely related to the nonlinear effect of ultrasonic Lamb waves propagation in materials. In this paper, the relationship among fatigue life, length and width of micro-cracks, and the acoustic nonlinearity parameter was established. The variation of the acoustic nonlinearity parameter caused by fatigue damage was analyzed based on micro-cracks growth. Considering the multimodal nature of nonlinear Lamb waves, we selected the low-frequency mode pairs S0–s0 and S1–s2 to evaluate fatigue damage in 7075 aluminum alloy plates. Both FE simulations and experiments show that the mode pair S1–s2 is more suitable than S0–s0 for the assessment of fatigue damage. It was found that with increasing fatigue cycles, the relative acoustic nonlinearity parameter A2/A12 firstly increases because the micro-cracks length extends while the micro-cracks width does not change much. The relative acoustic nonlinearity parameter A2/A12 reaches its peak at about 60% of the fatigue life. Then the relative acoustic nonlinearity parameter A2/A12 decreases because of the rapid increase in the micro-cracks width. Our findings clarify the mountain-shape curve between the relative acoustic nonlinearity parameter A2/A12 and the fatigue cycles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experimental comparison is reported here between two equivalent resonant subwavelength metasurfaces made of long aluminum beams glued closely together on a thin aluminum plate. One metasurface has a random distribution of the resonator beams, and the other has a regular square lattice of pitch 1.5 cm. The random lattice shows the "resonant" behavior of a typical metasurface, with a wide full bandgap for the first A0 Lamb mode. Instead, the regular square lattice combines Fano resonance with Bragg scattering at the edges of the passband, thus creating anisotropy and a pseudo bandgap. Comparisons with numerical simulations are performed, with good agreement with the experimental data. The multimodal response of the beams is also responsible for double negativity in a narrow frequency band, and the event of a pseudo bandgap around this same flexural resonance. In addition, the scattering regimes for both the random and regular metasurfaces are characterized using coherent and incoherent signal analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active Lamb wave detection is an effective and simple monitoring method for structural health monitoring (SHM). Piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT) ceramics are most commonly used as transducers to excite and receive Lamb wave. However, due to their hardness, thickness and brittleness, PZT ceramics are severely limited in detecting damage on curved surface structures. Herein, we report that flexible PZT film sensor is an excellent candidate for receiving Lamb wave used in Lamb wave-based SHM of aircraft. An improved piezoelectric coefficient d 33 (~130 pm V−1) is obtained in epitaxial PZT films grown on flexible inorganic mica substrates via van der Waals heteroepitaxy. Superior stable ferroelectricity and piezoelectricity retain in flexible PZT film after bending 104 cycles under a radius of 8 mm. As proven by experiment and simulation, flexible PZT film is demonstrated as an ultrasonic sensor with high sensitivity to be bonded on the curved aluminum plate for Lamb wave-based damage monitoring. Our work demonstrates that flexible PZT films have enormous potential for real-time light-weight and high-sensitivity receiver sensors for the SHM of aging aircraft. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When investigating the wave propagation and mode conversions in a thin aluminum plate partially immersed in water, a kind of wave packet interaction was observed. It was found that the transmitted ultrasonic signal consists of different wave packets, which contain essential information of different wave types. When the incident angle is very small, the signals can be identified as the major wave packet followed by its tail. The major packet includes the information of the incident wave while the tail is related to the mode conversion and propagation in the plate. When the incident angle increased, the major packet was literally engulfed by its tail, indicating that the directly transmitted incident ultrasound disappeared and more energy was coupled into the plate. The interactions between different wave packets found here reveal the excitation and propagation mechanisms of Lamb waves in plates, which would benefit applications in ultrasonic imaging, signal recognition, underwater acoustic communication, and so on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A semi-analytical finite element method algorithm was established to plot the dispersion curves of isotropic aluminum and orthotropic plates. The curves obtained are compared with those plotted by the DISPERSE software and with previous experimental work. The results showed that the accuracy of the method depends on the number of elements for meshing. To ensure good precision and speed of the method, the number of elements per plate thickness must be optimized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Love waves are of great importance in geophysics, electronics, and engineering. Despite intensive studies on high-frequency Love waves for delay lines and chemical/biomedical sensors, moderate-frequency and low-frequency Love waves have seldom been investigated. Here, Love waves in a 2-mm-thick Plexiglas plate bonded on a 50-mm-thick aluminum block were successfully excited and received by using d24 and d15 shear mode PZT wafers. A d31 mode PZT wafer was also employed as the sensor, and results show that no Rayleigh-Lamb type waves were generated. The group velocity curve of the excited Love wave from 120 to 525 kHz matches the theoretical curve well. This work could promote applications of Love waves in many engineering fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a reverberant cavity, when a noise field is sufficiently diffuse, the correlation of the signal measured by two sensors provides an estimation of the Green's function (GF) between them. Here, the convergence of this passive estimation in the case of elastic waves on thin plates is studied. A statistical approach is proposed, which relates the similarity between the cross correlation and the GF to the structural properties of the plate and the number of uncorrelated sources. The analysis is sustained by experimental results obtained on an aluminum plate. This study allows us to evaluate the efficiency of passive structural health monitoring of plate-like structures based on noise correlation. Finally, a most interesting finding shows an absolute upper bound of the signal-to-noise ratio for GF quality reconstruction: 4 N s / 5 , independently of the plate properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A Lamb wave and linear piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT) array-based monitoring method for the detection and quantification of crack damage is presented in this paper. Because existing PZT array arrangements are not suitable for quantitative monitoring of crack damage both in orientation and in length, a sparse linear PZT array is introduced and applied to collect crack reflections. Based on this new array, a method for estimating crack orientation is proposed. An amplitude spectrum as a function of angle is mapped using time delayed and summed signals. By finding the peaks in the spectra, the central actuator element and corresponding orientation angle are determined. Furthermore, the time of flight imaging method is modified to display and evaluate cracks quantitatively. Validating experiments are conducted on a T6061 aluminum plate, monitoring and evaluating single and connected cracks with various orientations in different locations. As suggested by the experiments, the orientation of most cracks can be well recognized and all cracks can be quantitatively displayed by the proposed methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optical breakdown of water is used as a sound source to excite a broadband set of leaky Lamb waves in submerged aluminum plates. The source is shown to simultaneously excite guided modes spanning 0.1–5 MHz in frequency and 0–0.8 mm−1 in wavenumber. The measured response overlaps well with dispersion curves for Lamb waves in the plates, revealing strong coupling to both symmetric and antisymmetric modes. The strongest responses arise when a mode's phase velocity approximately equals the plate's compressional wave velocity. These results are shown to arise from an interplay of the sensing geometry, guided wave speeds, and signal processing. Finally, implications for non-contact sensing are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the propagation of ultrasonic waves in structures, there is usually energy loss due to ultrasound energy diffusion and dissipation. The aim of this research is to characterize the ultrasound energy diffusion that occurs due to small-size damage on an aluminum plate using piezoceramic transducers, for the future purpose of developing a damage detection algorithm. The ultrasonic energy diffusion coefficient is related to the damage distributed in the medium. Meanwhile, the ultrasonic energy dissipation coefficient is related to the inhomogeneity of the medium. Both are usually employed to describe the characteristics of ultrasound energy diffusion. The existence of multimodes of Lamb waves in metallic plate structures results in the asynchronous energy transport of different modes. The mode of Lamb waves has a great influence on ultrasound energy diffusion as a result, and thus has to be chosen appropriately. In order to study the characteristics of ultrasound energy diffusion in metallic plate structures, an experimental setup of an aluminum plate with a through-hole, whose diameter varies from 0.6 mm to 1.2 mm, is used as the test specimen with the help of piezoceramic transducers. The experimental results of two categories of damages at different locations reveal that the existence of damage changes the energy transport between the actuator and the sensor. Also, when there is only one dominate mode of Lamb wave excited in the structure, the ultrasound energy diffusion coefficient decreases approximately linearly with the diameter of the simulated damage. Meanwhile, the ultrasonic energy dissipation coefficient increases approximately linearly with the diameter of the simulated damage. However, when two or more modes of Lamb waves are excited, due to the existence of different group velocities between the different modes, the energy transport of the different modes is asynchronous, and the ultrasonic energy diffusion is not strictly linear with the size of the damage. Therefore, it is recommended that only one dominant mode of Lamb wave should be excited during the characterization process, in order to ensure that the linear relationship between the damage size and the characteristic parameters is maintained. In addition, the findings from this paper demonstrate the potential of developing future damage detection algorithms using the linear relationships between damage size and the ultrasound energy diffusion coefficient or ultrasonic energy dissipation coefficient when a single dominant mode is excited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultrasonic Lamb wave is a promising tool for structural health monitoring and nondestructive evaluation of plate-like structures. Using an array with several piezoelectric discs for damage imaging (i.e. visual detection and localization) is of interest. Commonly used delay-and-sum method is limited for overlapped signals when several damages are closely distributed in the structure. To overcome this limitation, modal-based sparse reconstruction imaging method is applied for adjacent damages in this study. Firstly, Lamb wave dispersion curve is obtained by solving the Rayleigh-Lamb equations. Subsequently, propagation modal of the damage-reflected signal is constructed based on the solved dispersion curve. Finally, the modal is used for damage imaging via sparse reconstruction and basis pursuit de-noising. Experimental data measured in an aluminum plate is considered, and the result demonstrates that the sparse reconstruction imaging method is effective to detect and localize closely distributed damages in the presence of signal overlapping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of Lamb wave identification for the aerospace structures could be easily affected by the nonlinear-dispersion characteristics. In this paper, dispersion compensation of Lamb waves is of particular concern. Compared with the similar research works on the traditional signal domain transform methods, this study is based on signal construction from the viewpoint of nonlinear wavenumber linearization. Two compensation methods of linearly-dispersive signal construction (LDSC) and non-dispersive signal construction (NDSC) are proposed. Furthermore, to improve the compensation effect, the influence of the signal construction process on the other crucial signal properties, including the signal waveform and amplitude spectrum, is considered during the investigation. The linear-dispersion and non-dispersion effects are firstly analyzed. Then, after the basic signal construction principle is explored, the numerical realization of LDSC and NDSC is discussed, in which the signal waveform and amplitude spectrum preservation is especially regarded. Subsequently, associated with the delay-and-sum algorithm, LDSC or NDSC is employed for high spatial resolution damage imaging, so that the adjacent multi-damage or quantitative imaging capacity of Lamb waves can be strengthened. To verify the proposed signal construction and damage imaging methods, the experimental and numerical validation is finally arranged on the aluminum plates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most ultrasonic guided wave methods focus on tone burst excitation to reduce the effect of dispersion so as to facilitate signal interpretation. However, the resolution of the output cannot attain a very high value because time duration of the excitation waveform cannot be very small. To overcome this limitation, a pulse compression technique is introduced to Lamb wave propagation to achieve a $\delta$-like correlation so as to obtain a high resolution for inspection. Ideal $\delta $-like correlation is impossible as only a finite frequency bandwidth can propagate. The primary purpose of this paper is to design a proper excitation waveform for Lamb wave pulse compression, which shortens the correlation as close as possible to a $\delta $ function. To achieve this purpose, the performance of some typical signals is discussed in pulse compression, which include linear chirp (L-Chirp) signal, nonlinear chirp (NL-Chirp) signal, Barker code (BC), and Golay complementary code (GCC). In addition, how the excitation frequency range influences inspection resolution is investigated. A strategy for the frequency range determination is established subsequently. Finally, an experiment is carried out on an aluminum plate where these typical signals are used as excitations at different frequency ranges. The quantitative comparisons of the pulse compression responses validate the theoretical findings. By utilizing the experimental data, the improvement of pulse compression in resolution compared with tone burst excitation is also validated, and the robustness of the waveform design method to inaccuracies in the dispersion compensation is discussed as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acoustic emission (AE) testing is a widely used nondestructive testing (NDT) method to investigate material failure. When environmental conditions are harmful for the operation of the sensors, waveguides are typically mounted in between the inspected structure and the sensor. Such waveguides can be built from different materials or have different designs in accordance with the experimental needs. All these variations can cause changes in the acoustic emission signals in terms of modal conversion, additional attenuation or shift in frequency content. A finite element method (FEM) was used to model acoustic emission signal propagation in an aluminum plate with an attached waveguide and was validated against experimental data. The geometry of the waveguide is systematically changed by varying the radius and height to investigate the influence on the detected signals. Different waveguide materials were implemented and change of material properties as function of temperature were taken into account. Development of the option of modeling different waveguide options replaces the time consuming and expensive trial and error alternative of experiments. Thus, the aim of this research has important implications for those who use waveguides for AE testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the purpose of improving the damage localization accuracy, a prewarping technology is combined with step pulse excitation and this method is used in Lamb wave imaging of plate structures with adjacent damages. Based on the step pulse excitation, various narrowband or burst response can be derived by signal processing technology and this method provides flexibility for further prewarping approach. A narrowband signal warped with a preselected distance is then designed, and the dispersion in the response of this prewarping signal will be greatly reduced. However, in order to calculate the distance for prewarping, the first arrival needs to be estimated from the burst response. From the step-pulse response, narrowband responses at different central frequencies can be obtained, and by averaging peak-value time of their first arrivals, a more accurate estimation can be calculated. By using the prewarping method to the damage scattering signals before imaging, the imaging resolution of the delay-and-sum method can be highly enhanced. The experiment carried out in an aluminum plate with adjacent damages proves the efficiency of this method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new method for the inversion of elastic properties of an isotropic thin plate by line-focus acoustic microscopy. Over 10 modes of the leaky Lamb waves of a 380 $$\upmu $$ m thick aluminum plate were extracted by the $$V(f$$ , $$z)$$ measurement. The inversion method of hybrid particle swarm-based-simulated annealing (PS-B-SA) optimization induces an objective function dependent on the determinant of the coefficient matrix of the dispersive characteristic equation. PS-B-SA allows considerable flexibility in parametric inversion problem and seeks the global rather than the local minimum. An alternative image display method combined with the objective function will be used to show the dispersion curves and to demonstrate the principles of the PS-B-SA optimization algorithm. The elastic properties (Young's modulus $$E$$ , shear modulus $$G$$ , Poisson's ratio $$\nu $$ ) and thickness (2 $$h)$$ of the specimen are determined by the inversion of the dispersion curves. Inversed parameters by particle swarm optimization algorithm are compared with the PS-B-SA results to show the validity and stability of the hybrid method. Agreement between the inversed material parameters and the reported data is shown to be excellent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elastic wave velocities in metallic structures are affected by variations in environmental conditions such as changing temperature. This paper extends the theory of acoustoelasticity by allowing thermally induced strains in unconstrained isotropic media, and it experimentally examines the velocity variation of Lamb waves in aluminum plates (AL-6061) due to isothermal temperature deviations. This paper presents both thermally induced acoustoelastic constants and thermally varying effective Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio which include the third order elastic material constants. The experimental thermal sensitivity of the phase velocity ∂vP/∂vθ) for both the symmetric and antisymmetric modes are bounded by two theories, the acoustoelastic Lamb wave theory with thermo-acoustoelastic tensors and the thermoelastic Lamb wave theory using an effective thermo-acoustoelastic moduli. This paper shows the theoretical thermally induced acoustoelastic Lamb wave thermal sensitivity (∂vP/∂vθ) is an upper bound approximation of the experimental thermal changes, but the acoustoelastic Lamb wave theory is not valid for predicting the antisymmetric (A0) phase velocity at low frequency-thickness values, <1.55MHz mm for various temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The method of Lamb waves to detect defects in aerospace structures is already known in research environments for its benefits, using an inexpensive equipment. The major benefits are: accurate determination of location and size of the defects in material and the fact that it is a non destructive method. For experiments are used aluminum plates that are willing piezoelectric exciters as follows: a piezoelectric actuator placed on a point on the plate will excite that point and the signal will be received by a piezoelectric receiver placed on another point from the plate. By interpreting the shape, phase and amplitude of the received signal we can determine the shape and location of the defect. The excitation signal frequency should be previously known by determining the amplitude in a frequency band set between 10-800 kHz, for the plate without defects, which is called the tuning procedure. Due to the fact that the structures will work also on flight condition temperature as on high altitude or in space, it is necessary to check how these extremelly low temperatures influence the defect detection. For this purpose the first step is to determine how the temperature variation affects the tunning results. As preliminary study the first step of the tunning procedure has been performed at different low temperature down to - 70°C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The properties of ultrasonic Lamb waves, such as relatively small attenuation and high sensitivity to structural changes of the object being investigated, allow performing of non-destructive testing of various elongated structures like pipes, cables, etc. Due to the dispersion effect of Lamb waves, a waveform of the received informative signal is usually distorted, elongated and overlapping in the time domain. Therefore, in order to investigate objects using the ultrasonic Lamb waves and to reconstruct the dispersion curves, it is necessary to know the relationship between frequency, phase and group velocities and thickness of the plate. The zero-crossing technique for measurement of phase velocity of Lamb waves (the A0 and S0 modes) has been investigated using modelled dispersed signals and experimental signals obtained for an aluminium plate having thickness of 2 mm. A comparison between two reconstruction methods of Lamb wave phase velocity dispersion curves, namely, the two-dimensional fast Fourier transform (2D-FFT) and zero-crossing technique, along with the theoretical (analytical) dispersion curves is presented. The results indicate that the proposed zero-crossing method is suitable for use in reconstruction of dispersion curves in the regions affected by strong dispersion, especially for the A0 mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The method for defects detection inside the mechanical structures, namely aerospace structures, using the Lamb waves is widespread because of its benefits: it is nondestructive, may reveal the presence and size of defects with high accuracy and does not require any expensive equipment for application. One of the ways to implement this method consists in mechanically exciting a point of the plate using a piezoelectric actuator followed by the signal collection by means of a piezoelectric transducer located in another point of the same plate surface. By interpreting the shape, the phase and amplitude of the collected signal the presence of a defect, its type and size can be highlighted. As a specimen of mechanical structure, a rectangular aluminum plate has been used. The generation of the Lamb waves in the plate was performed with a signal of certain optimal frequency values that need to be determined in advance. The procedure for determining the optimal frequency values is called tuning and consists in measuring and processing the signals amplitude values for multiple frequencies of the excitation signal, ranging between 10-800 kHz. The article deals both with the procedure description and the relevant results obtained for aluminum plates of different sizes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents a novel area-scan damage identification method based on Lamb waves which can be used as a complementary method for point-scan nondestructive techniques. The proposed technique is able to identify the most probable locations of damages prior to point-scan test which lead to decreasing the time and cost of inspection. The test-piece surface was partitioned with some smaller areas and the damage probability presence of each area was evaluated. A 0 mode of Lamb wave was generated and collected using a mobile handmade transducer set at each area. Subsequently, a damage presence probability index (DPPI) based on the energy of captured responses was defined for each area. The area with the highest DPPI value highlights the most probable locations of damages in test-piece. Point-scan nondestructive methods can then be used once these areas are found to identify the damage in detail. The approach was validated by predicting the most probable locations of representative damages including through-thickness hole and crack in aluminum plates. The obtained experimental results demonstrated the high potential of developed method in defining the most probable locations of damages in structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Macrofiber composite (MFC) has been developed recently as a new type of smart material for piezoelectric transducers. It shows advantages over traditional piezoelectric ceramic materials (PZT) including the method of application, sensitivity, and cost. It can be embedded on the structure, which provides the possibility to monitor the structural health in real time. In this paper, the feasibility of this transducer for the Lamb wave inspection has been experimentally explored. A pair of MFC patches is bonded on a 2 mm thick aluminum plate, and it has been demonstrated that the dispersive characteristics of S0 and A0 modes, generated and detected by MFC patches, agreed well with the theory. The influence of the bonding condition of the transducer was also tested to show that rigid bonding is required to assure a high amplitude signal. In order to illustrate the performance of defect detection, an artificial defect fabricated on the surface of a specimen was inspected in the pitch-catch mode. The results showed that the MFC transducer is a promising Lamb wave transducer for nondestructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the defect detectability of Lamb wave inspection systems, the application of nonlinear signal processing was investigated. The approach is based on a Warped Frequency Transform (WFT) to compensate the dispersive behavior of ultrasonic guided waves, followed by a Wigner-Ville time-frequency analysis and the Hough Transform to further improve localization accuracy. As a result, an automatic detection procedure to locate defect-induced reflections was demonstrated and successfully tested by analyzing numerically simulated Lamb waves propagating in an aluminum plate. The proposed method is suitable for defect detection and can be easily implemented for real-world structural health monitoring applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An electroacoustic micro-device based on the propagation of guided acoustic Lamb waves in AlN/Al plate is described. The AlN thin film is deposited by sputtering technique, optimized to achieve a high degree of orientation (rocking curve full-width at half-maximum ≈ 3.5°) of the c-axis perpendicular to the plate surface. The AlN plate is micromachined using anisotropic reactive ion etching (RIE), followed by isotropic RIE to remove the silicon underlayer. Simulation results for the dispersion phase velocity curves and the electromechanical coupling coefficient (K²) are obtained by the matrix method and by the finite element method and compared with experimental data. A delay line is implemented on the structure and tested for the propagation of the first symmetrical Lamb mode (s0) at the frequency of 1.22 GHz. Measurements have shown that the structure is suitable for implementation of arrays of electroacoustic devices on a single chip for application to both sensing devices and signal processing systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study was carried out to examine Lamb-wave modal content as a function of the acoustic emission (AE) source rise-time. The study used a validated finite-element code to model the source operation and subsequent wave propagation up to a distance of 480 mm in a 4.7-mm thick aluminum plate with large transverse dimensions. To obtain the large propagation distances with sufficient transverse dimensions so that plate edge reflections did not arrive during the significant part of the direct AE signal, an axisymmetric code was used. The buried dipole AE sources were located at three different depths below the top surface of the plate, where the pseudo-AE sensors were located. These sensors provided the out-of-plane displacement as a function of time. The rise-times for the different finite-element runs varied from 0.5 µs to 15 µs. The resulting data were high-pass filtered at 40 kHz and re-sampled with a time step of 0.1 µs. The intense portions of the Lamb modes were determined by use of a Choi-Williams transform (CWT) for the range of source rise-times, three different source depths and the signal propagation distances. Higher Lamb modes were observed in the CWT results for the shortest rise-times, but fundamental mode frequencies still dominated for all the rise-time cases and different source depths. Thus, only the fundamental modes need to be considered in the determination of accurate signal arrival times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Guided wave (GW) dispersion curves can be extracted from a time-transient measurement by means of time-frequency representations (TFRs). Unfortunately, any TFR is subject to the time-frequency uncertainty principle. This, in general, limits the capability of TFRs to characterize closely spaced guided modes over a wide frequency range. To overcome this limitation, we implemented a new warped frequency transform that presents enhanced mode extraction capabilities because of a more flexible tiling of the time-frequency domain. The tiling is designed to match the dispersive spectro-temporal structure of a GW by selecting an appropriate map of the time-frequency plane. The proposed transformation is fast, invertible, and covariant to group delay shifts. An application to Lamb waves propagating in an aluminum plate is presented. Time-transient GWs propagation events obtained both numerically and experimentally are considered. The results show that the proposed warped frequency transform limits the interference patterns which appear with other TFRs and produces a sparse representation of the Lamb wave pattern that can be suitable for identification and characterization purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method based on fitting the theoretical dispersion curves of Lamb waves to experimental data is presented to determine the thickness and two independent elastic constants of aluminum plates a few millimeters thick. The waves are generated by means of the wedge method using a narrowband source, selecting the wedge angle and the acoustic frequency f so that mainly one mode is excited. A self-developed pulsed electronic speckle pattern interferometry system renders a two dimensional map of the out-of-plane acoustic displacement field at the plate surface, which allows an accurate measurement of the acoustic wavelength λ1. For any mode, the relation between λ1 and f depends on the three unknown parameters, so at least three experimental measurements (λ1i,fi) with different frequencies and/or different modes are required to calculate them. The suitability of different Lamb modes to determine each parameter when the others are known is studied, as well as the conditions that the experimental set of values must fulfill to calculate all three parameters. Numerous Lamb modes at different frequencies are generated in each plate, and a fitting is made based on the minimization of the error function, resulting in an accuracy better than 1%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates and evaluates the technology of using plate waves to detect the locations and sizes of circular holes and cracks in plates. Piezoelectric ceramic discs surface-mounted on both sides of an aluminum alloy plate were used as narrow-frequency plate wave actuators and sensors, and the antisymmetric plate wave signal was analyzed by wavelet transform in the time-frequency domain. The damage location and frequency spectrum characteristics were identified by the wave through time-of-flight difference and signal analysis of the damage scattered wave group. The plate wave signal of the damaged plate included the scattered wave signal and the plate wave signal transmitted directly between the piezoelectric discs. Under ideal conditions, the plate wave signal indicating damage can be obtained by subtracting the plate wave signal in a plate without damage from the plate wave signal scattered from actuators to sensors. This study established an optimization program based on the simplex algorithm to inversely calculate the location of the plate damage. The developed damage location objective function has a unique global minimum value that can ensure the accuracy of the damage location calculation, and good results were obtained in experiments. The spectral characteristics of the scattered plate wave were related to the type, size, wave propagation path, and incident angle of the damage. Numerical analyses of scattered spectra for various damages are needed as references to compare with experimental results in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lamb waves are used in various non-destructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM) applications due to their velocity sensitivity to the properties of the material and their propagation over the entire thickness of the object over a long distance with low attenuation. However, the interpretation of the received signals is complex due to the Lamb waves dispersion nature, multiple mode generation, reflections and other. This work presents a novel method for the Lamb waves fundamental modes phase velocity dispersion evaluation and reconstruction of these curves segments using only two signals measured at two close points. The carried out investigation using simulated signals has shown that the proposed method works with an extremely high accuracy - the mean relative error from the true values is less than 0.01%. The proposed method has been experimentally verified in two different mediums: isotropic – aluminium plate and anisotropic GFRP plate. The obtained results have indicated have that the mean relative error from the true values is less than 1% in the aluminium case. The comparison of the results obtained in the GFRP plate case has indicated that the proposed method allows to reconstruct the phase velocity dispersion curves segments in the object of complex structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Noncontact ultrasonic detection technology is an effective method to detect damage in time. This paper proposes a noncontact damage detection system based on air-coupled ultrasound and full-field laser vibrometer, which realizes the excitation of relatively single-mode guided waves and the wavefield automatic detection. The system performance is verified through experiments, and the experimental wavenumber is consistent with the theoretical dispersion characteristics of the Lamb wave in the A0 mode. Based on this system, the topography reconstruction algorithms, including the Wavenumber Filtering Algorithm and Spatial Wavenumber Algorithm, were tested and compared with the aluminum alloy plate and the carbon fiber reinforced polymer plate. The results show that, based on the air-coupled ultrasound and full-field laser vibrometer detection system, the Spatial Wavenumber Algorithm has better imaging error and contrast, and the damage edge detection is smoother. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lamb wave-based structural health monitoring techniques have the ability to scan a large area with relatively few sensors. Lamb wave imaging is a signal processing strategy that generates an image for locating scatterers according to the received Lamb waves. This paper presents a Lamb wave imaging method, which is formulated as a weighted structured sparse reconstruction problem. A dictionary is constructed by an analytical Lamb wave scattering model and an edge reflection prediction technique, which is used to decompose the experimental scattering signals under the constraint of weighted structured sparsity. The weights are generated from the correlation coefficients between the scattering signals and the predicted ones. Simulation and experimental results from an aluminum plate verify the effectiveness of the present method, which can generate images with sparse pixel values even with very limited number of sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Piezoelectric transducers are convenient enablers for generating and receiving Lamb waves for damage detection. Fatigue cracks are one of the most common causes for the failure of metallic structures. Increasing emphasis on the integrity of critical structures creates an urgent need to monitor structures and to detect cracks at an early stage to prevent catastrophic failures. This paper presents a two-dimensional (2D) cross-correlation imaging technique that can not only detect a fatigue crack but can also precisely image the fatigue cracks in metallic structures. The imaging method was based on the cross-correlation algorithm that uses incident waves and the crack-scattered waves of all directions to generate the crack image. Fatigue testing for crack generation was then conducted in both an aluminum plate and a stainless-steel plate. Piezoelectric wafer transducer was used to actuate the interrogating Lamb wave. To obtain the scattered waves as well as the incident waves, a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer was adopted for acquiring time-space multidimensional wavefield, followed with frequency-wavenumber processing. The proof-of-concept study was conducted in an aluminum plate with a hairline fatigue crack. A frequency-wavenumber filtering method was used to obtain the incident wave and the scattered wave wavefields for the cross-correlation imaging. After this, the imaging method was applied to evaluate cracks on a stainless-steel plate generated during fatigue loading tests. The presented imaging method showed successful inspection and quantification results of the crack and its growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]