Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) has incredible potential for structural health monitoring (SHM) when applied to structures in which mechanical damage is coupled with changes in electrical conductivity. Practically, however, the potential of EIT for SHM is largely nullified by requiring both non-negligible computational resources and accurate initial conductivity estimates. By working in resistivity instead of conductivity and constraining the change in resistivity to be a series of two-dimensional sine waves, a novel resistivity-based EIT formulation is herein developed that significantly abates the computational requirements of EIT and is independent of initial estimates. This approach is explored analytically and then demonstrated experimentally by locating impact damage to a glass fiber/epoxy/carbon black laminate.

Date Published: 20 April 2016
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 9803, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2016, 980310 (20 April 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2222573

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9803:
Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2016
Jerome P. Lynch, Editor(s)