Guided wave propagation and interaction with defects in aerospace structures is addressed in the literature only for specific and limited number of simple components and types of defects. The knowledge-gap based project between industrial and academic researchers presented in this paper aims at providing the industry with an extended knowledge base for a variety of generic structures that define a set of standards for guided wave propagation and interaction with damage or geometrical features. The knowledge base will contain metrics on guided waves propagation (in terms of velocity dispersion curves and attenuation) and their interaction with geometrical or damage features (spatial patterns, reflection and transmission coefficients). This paper presents the first step in this project, where structural features and design parameters (geometry, material, assembly configuration, surface finish, sealant, …) have been identified, extracted and filtered for their relevance from an extensive list of aerospace structures of interest. This list was created with the industrial partners, combining military and civil aircraft structures. Moreover, a list of in-service damage parameters (extent, depth, location, orientation, type …) has been identified, based on maintenance and in-service manuals, damage tolerance analysis reports, and following the analysis of part drawings. These structures of interest have then been rated by academic partners to extract the most relevant structures for experimental and numerical parametric studies. Based on this reduced list of structures, a set of simplified test articles has been proposed. This paper presents the detailed systematic process for selecting and designing the simplified test articles, together with the geometrical parameters to be varied in the study of guided wave propagation and interaction with both geometrical features and in-service damage.
doi: 10.12783/SHM2015/246