Guided acoustic wave techniques have been found to be very effective for damage detection. In this investigation Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) transducers are used to generate guided acoustic waves for structural health monitoring of a variety of composite specimens. Multiple sets of composite plate specimens are inspected for impact induced damage detection using PZT transducers. Composite samples are divided into two groups for comparative studies i.e. glass fiber composites and basalt fiber composites. They are damaged by impactors having different levels of impact energy. A chirp signal is excited and propagated through the specimens in a single sided excitation/detection setup to investigate the damages induced by impacts of varying intensity. Signal processing of the recorded signals for damage analysis involved both linear and nonlinear analyses. Linear ultrasonic analysis such as change in the time-of-flight of the propagating waves, Fast Fourier Transform and S-Transform of the recorded signals were tried out while the nonlinear ultrasonic analysis involved the Sideband Peak Count or the SPC technique

Date Published: 1 April 2019
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 10972, Health Monitoring of Structural and Biological Systems XIII, 109720X (1 April 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2513783

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10972:
Health Monitoring of Structural and Biological Systems XIII
Paul Fromme; Zhongqing Su, Editor(s)