Active Wave Propagation and Sensing in Plates

Abstract

Health monitoring of aerospace structures can be done using an active interrogation approach with diagnostic Lamb waves. Piezoelectric patches are often used to generate the waves, and it is helpful to understand how these waves propagate through a structure. To give a basic understanding of the actual physical process of wave propagation, a model is developed to simulate asymmetric wave propagation in a panel and to produce a movie of the wave motion. The waves can be generated using piezoceramic patches of any size or shape. The propagation, reflection, and interference of the waves are represented in the model. Measuring the wave propagation is the second important aspect of damage detection. Continuous sensors are useful for measuring waves because of the distributed nature of the sensor and the wave. Two sensor designs are modeled, and their effectiveness in measuring acoustic waves is studied. The simulation model developed is useful to understand wave propagation and to optimize the type of sensors that might be used for health monitoring of plate-like structures.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 14, 2001
Accession Number
ADA395622

Entities

People

  • Anindya Ghoshal
  • Frederick Ferguson
  • Mannur J. Sundaresan
  • Mark J. Schulz
  • William N. Martin

Organizations

  • National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acoustic Emissions
  • Acquisition
  • Actuators
  • Composite Materials
  • Constitutive Equations
  • Damage Detection
  • Data Acquisition
  • Detectors
  • Engineering
  • Equations
  • Fiberglass
  • Materials
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Military Research
  • Simulations
  • Structural Health Monitoring
  • Wave Propagation

Fields of Study

  • Engineering
  • Physics

Readers

  • Electromagnetic Wave Scattering and Antenna Radiation Engineering
  • Structural Health Monitoring of Composite Structures.

Technology Areas

  • Space