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Ultrasonic Guided Wave Propagation in Cellular Composite Plates
Abstract
Using guided waves (GW) generated and received by a mesh of piezoelectric (PZT) actuators and sensors is a developing technology for structural health monitoring (SHM) in composite structures. Due to the high sensitivity, the possibility of an online monitoring and the low cost of the required equipments, GW based damage detection systems are an interesting SHM technique for many industries. In the present study, the application of GW for SHM has been extended to more complex composite cellular structures, such as honeycomb, metallic foam, hollow sphere and particle rein-forced structures. To avoid the experimental costs numerical simulations based on finite element method (FEM) are applied to investigate these phenomena. To reduce the computational efforts a new kind of simplification approach based on geometrical parametric studies is suggested and tested numerically as well as experimentally. Finally, based on the parametric studies the appropriate mode and frequencies are suggested to detect damages in cellular structures. The damages are determined based on mode convergence phenomena as the waves interact with damages in cellular composite structures.