Elastic Waves Excitation and Focusing by a Piezoelectric Transducer with Intermediate Layered Elastic Metamaterials with and without Periodic Arrays of Interfacial Voids.

Optimization of the structure of piezoelectric transducers such as the proper design of matching layers can increase maximum wave energy transmission to the host structure and transducer sensitivity. A novel configuration of an ultrasonic transducer, where elastic metamaterial insertion is introduced to provide bulk wave mode conversion and to increase wave energy transfer into a substrate, is proposed. Configurations of layered elastic metamaterials with crack-like voids are examined theoretically since they can provide wide band gaps and strong wave localization and trapping. The analysis shows that the proposed metamaterial-based matching layers can sufficiently change wave energy transmission from a piezoelectric active element for various frequency ranges (relatively low frequencies as well as higher ones). The proposed configuration can also be useful for advanced sensing with higher sensitivity in certain frequency ranges or for demultiplexing different kinds of elastic waves.

Performance Assessment for a Guided Wave-Based SHM System Applied to a Stiffened Composite Structure.

To assess the ability of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems, a variety of prerequisites and contributing factors have to be taken into account. Within this publication, this variety is analyzed for actively introduced guided wave-based SHM systems. For these systems, it is not possible to analyze their performance without taking into account their structure and their applied system parameters. Therefore, interdependencies of performance assessment are displayed in an SHM pyramid based on the structure and its monitoring requirements. Factors influencing the quality, capability and reliability of the monitoring system are given and put into relation with state-of-the-art performance analysis in a non-destructive evaluation. While some aspects are similar and can be treated in similar ways, others, such as location, environmental condition and structural dependency, demand novel solutions. Using an open-access data set from the Open Guided Waves platform, a detailed method description and analysis of path-based performance assessment is presented.The adopted approach clearly begs the question about the decision framework, as the threshold affects the reliability of the system. In addition, the findings show the effect of the propagation path according to the damage position. Indeed, the distance of damage directly affects the system performance. Otherwise, the propagation direction does not alter the potentiality of the detection approach despite the anisotropy of composites. Nonetheless, the finite waveguide makes it necessary to look at the whole paths, as singular phenomena associated with the reflections may appear. Numerical investigation helps to clarify the centrality of wave mechanics and the necessity to take sensor position into account as an influencing factor. Starting from the findings achieved, all the issues are discussed, and potential future steps are outlined.

Elastodynamic Behaviour of Laminate Structures with Soft Thin Interlayers: Theory and Experiment.

Laminate structures composed of stiff plates and thin soft interlayers are widely used in aerospace, automotive and civil engineering encouraging the development of reliable non-destructive strategies for their condition assessment. In the paper, elastodynamic behaviour of such laminate structures is investigated with emphasis on its application in ultrasonic based NDT and SHM for the identification of interlayer mechanical and interfacial contact properties. A particular attention is given to the practically important frequency range, in which the wavelength considerably exceeds the thickness of the film. Three layer model with spring-type boundary conditions employed for imperfect contact simulation is used for numerical investigation. Novel effective boundary conditions are derived via asymptotic expansion technique and used for analysis of the peculiar properties of elastic guided waves in considered laminates. It is revealed that the thin and soft film influences the behaviour of the laminate mainly via the effective stiffnesses being a combination of the elastic moduli of the film, its thickness and interface stiffnesses. To evaluate each of these parameters separately (or to figure out that the available experimental data are insufficient), a step-wise procedure employing the effective boundary conditions is proposed and tested versus the laser Doppler vibrometry data for Lamb waves in Aluminium/Polymer film/Alumunium structure. A good agreement between theoretical and experimental data is demonstrated for a certain symmetric laminate specimen. The possibility of using film-related thickness resonance frequencies to estimate the film properties and contact quality is also demonstrated. Additionally, the rich family of edge waves is also investigated, and the splitting of fundamental edge waves into pairs is revealed.

Experimental observation of theoretically predicted spectrum of edge waves in a thick elastic plate with facets.

The existence of the edge waves spectrum predicted in a series of recent theoretical studies is investigated and confirmed experimentally. Wave motion in 20 mm thickness aluminium rectangular plate with two facets is generated by a circular piezoelectric transducer and measured by laser Doppler vibrometry. Eight edge modes (four symmetric and four antisymmetric) are clearly observed by means of wavenumber-frequency analysis applied to out-of-plane velocities measured at the edge. The semi-analytical method used by the authors in previous theoretical studies is modified to take into account the facets. By the numerical investigations of edge waves in the plate with facets, the sensitivity of attenuation of higher order edge waves to the form of edge profile is revealed. A good agreement between experimental data and theoretical predictions is demonstrated for dispersion curves and the waveforms of individual modes extracted by means of 2D bandpass filters.

Group velocity of cylindrical guided waves in anisotropic laminate composites.

An explicit expression for the group velocity of wave packets, propagating in a laminate anisotropic composite plate in prescribed directions, is proposed. It is based on the cylindrical guided wave asymptotics derived from the path integral representation for wave fields generated in the composites by given localized sources. The expression derived is theoretically confirmed by the comparison with a known representation for the group velocity vector of a plane guided wave. Then it is experimentally validated against laser vibrometer measurements of guided wave packets generated by a piezoelectric wafer active sensor in a composite plate.

Frequency dependent directivity of guided waves excited by circular transducers in anisotropic composite plates.

Lamb wave propagation in fiber-reinforced composite plates is featured by a pronounced directivity of wave energy transfer along the fibers from a point surface source. In the case of non-point (sized) source, the main lobe of radiation diagram may turn with frequency up to the orthogonal to the fibers direction. This effect has been theoretically studied and physically explained in the context of semi-analytical integral-equation based mathematical model. The present paper gives its experimental verification.

Resonance blocking and passing effects in two-dimensional elastic waveguides with obstacles.

Resonance localization of wave energy in two-dimensional (2D) waveguides with obstacles, known as a trapped mode effect, results in blocking of wave propagation. This effect is closely connected with the allocation of natural resonance poles in the complex frequency plane, which are in fact the spectral points of the related boundary value problem. With several obstacles the number of poles increases in parallel with the number of defects. The location of the poles in the complex frequency plane depends on the defect's relative position, but the gaps of transmission coefficient plots generally remain in the same frequency ranges as for every single obstacle separately. This property gives a possibility to extend gap bands by a properly selected combination of various scatterers. On the other hand, a resonance wave passing in narrow bands associated with the poles is also observed. Thus, while a resonance response of a single obstacle works as a blocker, the waveguide with several obstacles becomes opened in narrow vicinities of nearly real spectral poles, just as it is known for one-dimensional (1D) waveguides with a finite number of periodic scatterers. In the present paper the blocking and passing effects are analyzed based on a semi-analytical model for wave propagation in a 2D elastic layer with cracks or rigid inclusions.

Forced wave propagation and energy distribution in anisotropic laminate composites.

Elastodynamic response of anisotropic laminate composite structures subjected to a force loading is evaluated based on the integral representations in terms of Green's matrices. Explicit and asymptotic expressions for guided waves generated by a given source are then obtained from those integrals by means of series expansions and the residue technique. Unlike to conventional modal expansions, such representations keep information about the source, giving an opportunity for a quantitative near- and far-field analysis of generated waves. An effective computer implementation is achieved by the use of fast and stable algorithms for the Green matrix, pole, and residue calculations. The potential of the model is demonstrated by examples of anisotropy manifestation in the directivity of radiated waves. The effect of main energy outflow in the direction of either upper- or inner-ply orientation depending on the source size and frequency is discussed.