Journal Articles

In this paper, the excitation and propagation of guided waves in multilayer hollow cylinders with piezoelectric wafer active sensor (PWAS) transducers were modeled with the normal mode expansion (NME) method using the semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) formulation. The theoretical development of SAFE for hollow cylindrical structures was introduced and used to obtain guided-wave mode shapes and dispersion curves of multilayer hollow cylinders. The SAFE discretization was applied across the thickness. The layers present in the cylinder were modeled by grouping the elements in the region corresponding to the respective layers. Each finite element region was given the property of the layer that it represented. The number of elements in a layer was determined through convergence studies. The PWAS excitation effect, introduced using the ideal-bonding assumption, was represented by a line-force acting on the PWAS boundary. The SAFE-NME solution obtained in the wavenumber domain was resolved in the physical domain through inverse Fourier transform and residue theorem. Experimental validation of theoretical prediction was performed by comparison with scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) measurements from a “6-inch schedule-40” pipe of 11 mm thickness installed with a 7-mm square PWAS transducer for wave excitation. Numerical prediction of the guided wave propagation emanating from the PWAS was first performed and wavefront visualization was obtained. An SLDV area scan of the guided waves generated by the PWAS was then performed and compared with numerical predictions. A good match between experiment and prediction was observed.

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.

This paper addresses a forward problem using an analytical global–local (AGL) method based on the physics of the Lamb wave propagation in the presence of a crack in the complex structure which would be beneficial for the inverse problem of damage detection. Discontinuity in a structure acts as a damage source and interacts with a Lamb wave. The global analytical solution determines the wave generation by a transmitter, wave propagation through the structure, and detection by a receiver. The local analytical solution determines the scattering coefficients for the Lamb waves at the discontinuity location. These frequency-dependent scatter coefficients are calculated considering transmission, reflection, and mode conversion. An analytical method called “complex mode expansion with vector projection (CMEP)” is used to calculate the scattering coefficients of Lamb wave modes from geometric discontinuities. The scattered wave field from a discontinuity is expanded in terms of complex Lamb wave modes with unknown scatter coefficients. These unknown coefficients are obtained from the boundary conditions using a vector projection utilizing the power expression. Two test cases are considered in this paper: (a) a plate with a pristine stiffener and (b) a plate with a cracked stiffener. Complex-valued scattering coefficients are calculated from 50 to 350 kHz for S0 incident waves. Scatter coefficients are compared for both cases to identify the suitable frequency range to excite a Lamb wave to detect the crack. The frequency-dependent complex-valued scattering coefficients are then inserted into the global analytical model. Therefore, in combination AGL method provides the exact analytical Lamb wave solution for the simulation of Lamb wave propagation and interaction with a discontinuity. By comparing the waveforms for both pristine stiffener and cracked stiffener, the crack can be detected. An FEM transient analysis was also performed to calculate the scattered wave signals. FEM results agree well with the AGL predicted results. An experiment was also performed to validate the AGL result. The obtained experimental results match well with the CMEP analytical predictions. The present AGL method is a highly computationally efficient simulation approach which allows performing virtual experiments for structural health monitoring applications.

Delamination is one of the most common and dangerous failure modes for composites because it takes place and grows in the absence of any visible surface damage. The successful implementation of delamination detection in aerospace composite structures is always challenging due to the general anisotropic behavior of composites and multilayer delamination scenarios. This article presents a numerical and experimental investigation to detect and characterize the multilayer delaminations in carbon fiber–reinforced polymer composite plates using guided waves and wavenumber analysis. Multiphysics three-dimensional finite element simulations of the composite plate with five different delamination scenarios are conducted to provide the out-of-plane wave motion for wavenumber analysis. The out-of-plane results from finite element simulations of one delamination and two delaminations are validated by the scanning laser Doppler vibrometer measurements. It is found that the wavenumber analysis can identify the plies between which the delamination occurs and evaluate the delamination severity by comparing the new wavenumbers due to the trapped waves in the delamination regions, which is potentially related to delamination severity. Both numerical and experimental results demonstrate a good capability for the detection and characterization of multilayer delaminations in composite structures.

The acoustic emission (AE) method is a very popular and well-developed method for passive structural health monitoring of metallic and composite structures. AE method has been efficiently used for damage source detection and damage characterization in a large variety of structures over the years, such as thin sheet metals. Piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWASs) are lightweight and inexpensive transducers, which recently drew the attention of the AE research community for AE sensing. The focus of this paper is on understanding the fatigue crack growth AE signals in thin sheet metals recorded using PWAS sensors on the basis of the Lamb wave theory and using this understanding for predictive modeling of AE signals. After a brief introduction, the paper discusses the principles of sensing acoustic signals by using PWAS. The derivation of a closed-form expression for PWAS response due to a stress wave is presented. The transformations happening to the AE signal according to the instrumentations we used for the fatigue crack AE experiment is also discussed. It is followed by a summary of the in situ AE experiments performed for recording fatigue crack growth AE and the results. Then, we present an analytical model of fatigue crack growth AE and a comparison with experimental results. The fatigue crack growth AE source was modeled analytically using the dipole moment concept. By using the source modeling concept, the analytical predictive modeling and simulation of the AE were performed using normal mode expansion (NME). The simulation results showed good agreement with experimental results. A strong presence of nondispersive S0 Lamb wave mode due to the fatigue crack growth event was observed in the simulation and experiment. Finally, the analytical method was verified using the finite element method. The paper ends with a summary and conclusions; suggestions for further work are also presented.

The guided wave technique is commonly used in structural health monitoring as the guided waves can propagate far in the structures without much energy loss. The guided waves are conventionally generated by the surface-mounted piezoelectric wafer active sensor (PWAS). However, there is still lack of understanding of the wave propagation in layered structures, especially in structures made of anisotropic materials such as carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites. In this paper, the Rayleigh-Lamb wave strain tuning curves in a PWAS-mounted unidirectional CFRP plate are analytically derived using the normal mode expansion (NME) method. The excitation frequency spectrum is then multiplied by the tuning curves to calculate the frequency response spectrum. The corresponding time domain responses are obtained through the inverse Fourier transform. The theoretical calculations are validated through finite element analysis and an experimental study. The PWAS responses under the free, debonded and bonded CFRP conditions are investigated and compared. The results demonstrate that the amplitude and travelling time of wave packet can be used to evaluate the CFRP bonding conditions. The method can work on a baseline-free manner.

In this paper, an attempt has been made to conduct controlled low velocity impact experiments in quasi-isotropic carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites of increasing thicknesses to generate barely visible impact damage (BVID) that creates 1″ impact damage diameter. Such impacted CFRP coupons with controlled damage diameter would serve in the future for validation of structural health monitoring (SHM) and nondestructive evaluation (NDE) damage detection methodologies. Various 2-mm, 4-mm and 6-mm thick quasi-isotropic CFRP composite plates having similar stacking sequence were manufactured in a compression molding machine. These plates were cut into numerous 6″ × 4″ coupons to be impacted in accordance with ASTM D7136 standard on a Dynatup impact testing machine. The goal of the experiments was to identify the combination of impactor mass, energy and momentum at which approximately 1″ impact damage diameter could be produced for test coupons of increasing thicknesses. Interesting observations were made with respect to the size and shape of the impact damage as the thickness of the composite coupons was increased from 2-mm to 6-mm. Modified experiments were also conducted on 6-mm coupons to achieve close to 1″ impact damage diameter. The greatest challenge in conducting these experiments was in the thick 4-mm and 6-mm coupons which did not display a predictable trend. Future work should focus on overcoming this challenge towards achieving a predictable impact damage size methodology.

This article presents a theoretical and numerical analysis of guided wave released during an acoustic emission event using excitation potentials. Theoretical formulation showed that guided wave generated using excitation potentials follows the Rayleigh–Lamb equation. The numerical studies predict the out-of-plane displacement of acoustic emission guided wave on the plate surface at some distance away from the source. Parameter studies were performed to evaluate the effect of (1) pressure and shear potentials acting alone and in combination, (2) plate thickness, (3) source depth, (4) rise time, and (5) propagating distance away from the source. Numerical results showed that peak amplitude of S0 signal increases with increasing plate thickness, whereas the peak amplitude of A0 signal initially decreases and then increases with increasing plate thickness. Regarding the source depth, it was found that peak amplitude of S0 signal decreases and A0 signal increases with increasing source depth. Peak time showed a notable contribution to the low-frequency component of A0 signal. There were large losses in S0 and A0 peak signal amplitude over the propagation distance from 100 to 500 mm.

In this article, a new avenue of using the piezoelectric wafer active sensor (PWAS) for detecting the fatigue crack generated acoustic emission (AE) signals is presented. In-situ AE-fatigue experiments were conducted using PWAS along with two commercially available AE sensors. It has been shown that the PWAS and existing AE sensors successfully captured the AE signals from the fatigue crack growth in a thin aerospace specimen. Two experiments were conducted using the PWAS with each of the commercial AE sensors. For each experiment, two AE analyses were performed: (1) the hit-based analysis, (2) the waveform-based analysis. The fatigue loading was synchronized with the AE measurements. This allowed comparing the AE hits due to a particular AE event captured by PWAS and the other sensors. All the sensors showed a very similar pattern of AE hits as observed from the hit-based analysis. The AE waveform-based analysis was used to compare the waveforms and their frequency spectra captured by the three sensors. The commercial PICO showed ringing in the AE signals and showed a weak response in high-frequency region. The commercial S9225 had better signal-to-noise ratio but it also showed a weak response in high-frequency region. It was found that all sensors captured the low-frequency flexural modes of the guided acoustic waves. However, the high-frequency acoustic wave signals were predominately captured by the PWAS. The AE waveform-based analysis provided more insight of the AE source and guided wave propagation modes.

This paper presents an experimental validation of an analytical method called complex mode expansion with vector projection (CMEP), which is used to calculate the scattering coefficients (amplitude of the out-of-plane velocity) of Lamb wave modes from geometric discontinuities. For a test case, a plate with a thickness step change type geometric discontinuity is considered in this paper. The scattered wave fields from the discontinuity are expanded in terms of complex Lamb wave modes with unknown scatter coefficients. These unknown coefficients are obtained by projecting the stress or displacement boundary conditions on the displacement or stress boundary conditions utilizing the power expression. In the analytical analysis, complex-valued scatter coefficients are calculated with frequency-thickness product from 50 to 1500 kHz mm for A0 incident wave. A parametric study was conducted using CMEP to find the optimized step depth ratio for the experiment. For incident A0 mode at step depth ratio of 0.6, the scattering coefficients of reflected and transmitted S0 modes are maximum. A plate of thickness 4.86 mm with a step depth ratio of 0.6 was chosen for experimental study. Long piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) were used to create straight crested Lamb wave modes. Antisymmetric Lamb wave mode selectively excited by using two PWAS in out of phase on opposite sides of the plate. Scanning laser Doppler vibrometer was used to measure the out-of-plane velocity of scattered Lamb wave fields on the plate. Scatter coefficients were calculated from Fourier transform of the time domain signal. The obtained experimental results agree well with the CMEP analytical predictions.