A variable-frequency structural health monitoring system based on omnidirectional shear horizontal wave piezoelectric transducers. (15th January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Huan, Qiang; Miao, Hongchen; Li, Faxin
• Is Part Of: Smart materials and structures. Volume 27:Number 2(2018:Feb.)
• Publication Date: 2018-01-15
• Subjects: structural health monitoring -- guided waves -- shear horizontal wave -- piezoelectric transducers; Smart materials -- Periodicals; Strucural design -- Periodicals; 620.11
• DOI: 10.1088/1361-665X/aaa207
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0964-1726

Abstract

Abstract: Structural health monitoring (SHM) is of great importance for engineering structures as it may detect the early degradation and thus avoid life and financial loss. Guided wave based inspection is very useful in SHM due to its capability for long distance and wide range monitoring. The fundamental shear horizontal (SH0 ) wave based method should be most promising since SH0 is the unique non-dispersive wave mode in plate-like structures. In this work, a sparse array SHM system based on omnidirectional SH wave piezoelectric transducers (OSH-PT) was proposed and the multi data fusion method was used for defect inspection in a 2 mm thick aluminum plate. Firstly, the performances of three types OSH-PTs was comprehensively compared and the thickness-poled d15 mode OSH-PT used in this work was demonstrated obviously superior to the other two. Then, the signal processing method and imaging algorithm for this SHM system was presented. Finally, experiments were carried out to examine the performance of the proposed SHM system in defect localization and imaging. Results indicated that this SHM system can locate a through hole as small as 0.12 λ (4 mm) in diameter (where λ is the wavelength corresponding to the central operation frequency) under frequencies from 90 to 150 kHz. It can also locate multiple defects accurately based on the baseline subtraction method. Obviously, this SHM system can detect larger areas with sparse sensors because of the adopted single mode, non-dispersive and low frequency SH0 wave which can propagate long distance with small attenuation. Considering its good performances, simple data processing and sparse array, this SH0 wave-based SHM system is expected to greatly promote the applications of guided wave inspection.