Excitability of guided waves in composites with PWAS transducers

Abstract

Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors (PWAS) are convenient enablers for generating and receiving ultrasonic guided waves. The wide application of composite structures has put new challenges for the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) community due to the general anisotropic behaviors and complicated guided wave features in composites. The excitability of guided waves in composite structures directly influences the implementation of active sensing systems to achieve the best interrogation of certain sensing directions. This paper presents a hybrid modeling technique for studying the excitably of guided waves in composite structures with PWAS transducers. This hybrid technique comprehensively covers local finite element model (FEM), semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) method, and analytical guided wave solutions. Harmonic analysis of a small-size local FEM with non-reflective boundaries (NRB) was carried out for obtaining guided wave generation features in plate structures. The PWAS transducers were modeled with coupled filed elements. Thus, the FEM can fully capture the geometry and material property effects of PWAS transducers and their influence on the guided wave excitation. SAFE method was used to obtain the complicated guided wave features in composites such as dispersion curves and modeshapes. The SAFE procedure was coded into MATLAB Graphical User Interface (GUI), and the software SAFE-DISPERSION was developed. To study the excitability of each wave mode, we considered all the possible wave modes being generated simultaneously and propagating independently. The analytical wave expressions based on the exact guided wave solution with Hankel functions were used to join the SAFE method and the local FEM. Formulated in frequency domain, the hybrid model is highly efficient, providing an over determined equation system for the calculation of mode participation factors. Case studies were carried out: (1) the Lamb wave excitability in an aluminum plate was investigated and compared with classical pin force models to show the feasibility of the hybrid technique; (2) the guided wave excitability in a woven glass fiber composite (GFRP) plate was studied with circular and square PWAS transducers. The paper finishes with summary, conclusions, and suggestions for future work.