Pure S0 and SH0 detections of various damage types in aerospace composites

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This paper proposes a new single-mode guided wave-based method to detect various types of damage in aerospace composites. In this method, single-mode guided wave excitation was achieved using adjustable angle beam transducers (ABT). The ABT tuning angles of various pure-mode guided waves were calculated based on Snell's law applied to the composite dispersion curves. A finite element (FE) simulation of pure S0 mode excitation in a crossply composite plate was conducted and the simulation results were validated by the experiment. For the first time, angle beam transducers were applied to generate pure shear horizontal (SH0) wave in a thick quasi-isotropic composite plate. The pure SH0 wave excitation was successfully verified by a three-dimensional (3D) FE simulation. SH0-mode wave propagation and interaction with delaminations were further conducted and strong trapped waves within the delamination regions were observed. Experiments using S0 or SH0 pure-mode guided waves were conducted to detect various types of composite damage, such as wrinkle damage in the crossply composite plate, multilayer delaminations by Teflon inserts, and actual impact damage in the thick quasi-isotropic composite plate. A significant amplitude drop was observed due to the presence of different composite damage types. In addition, a linear scanning method using pure SH0 wave was also developed to estimate the sizes of delaminations and impact damage. Both numerical and experimental results demonstrated the validity and usefulness of the proposed method for the detection of various damage types in composites.