Plate-like structure health monitoring based on ultrasonic guided wave technology by using bonded piezoelectric ceramic wafers

Abstract

Piezoelectric ceramic wafers are applied for the excitation and detection of ultrasonic guided waves to determine the health state of plate-like structures. Two PZT wafers, whose diameter is 11mm and thickness is 0.4mm respectively, are bonded permanently on the surface of a 1mm thick aluminum plate. One of these wafers is actuated by sinusoidal tone burst at various frequencies ranging from 100kHz to 500kHz, the other one is used as a receiver for acquiring ultrasonic guided wave signals. According to the amplitudes and shapes of these received signals, guided wave modes and their proper frequency range by using these wafers are determined. For the improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio, the Daubechies wavelet of order 40 is used for signal denoising as the mother wavelet. Furthermore, the detection of an artificial cylindrical through-hole defect is achieved by using S0 at 300kHz. Experimental results show that it is feasible and effective to detect defects in plate-like structures based on ultrasonic guided wave technology by using bonded piezoelectric ceramic wafers.