Modeling Lamb Wave Propagation in Damaged Structures Based upon Spectral Element Method

Abstract

Structural health monitoring based on Lamb wave attracts great attention in large-span structures. Lamb wave propagation in complex structures is very complicated due to multiple reflection and mode conversion at geometrical and material features. For effectively inspecting structural integrity, numerical simulation is employed to for extract damage features. It is essential to develop fast and low-cost simulating methods to study Lamb wave propagation in damaged structures. Spectral element method (SEM) is one of the most attractive methods, which is employed to study wave propagation in damaged structures. A massless spring, coupling the longitudinal and rotational vibration, is proposed to model a transverse crack and analyze wave propagation in a composite cracked beam based on SEM. Cracked spectral element formulation is derived by modeling the crack as the spring, whose stiffness is obtained from laws of fracture mechanics. Due to asymmetry of the crack, extensional and flexural wave modes are reflected and transmitted from an incident flexural wave mode. The proposed model is verified by comparing with conventional finite element analysis. Power reflection and transmission varying with the crack depth is also calculated. The results indicate that power reflection/transmission ratio of a single mode is monotonic, which may provide some quantitative foundations for structural health monitoring.