Damage imaging that exploits multipath scattered Lamb waves

Abstract

This article presents a multipath Lamb wave imaging method that leverages the extra reflections present in the recorded ultrasonic waveforms for structural prognosis. Under the ray acoustic approximation, an edge behaves like a mirror, which changes the propagation path of a wave and provides more views of the damage than can be obtained from direct scattering. To accommodate for these extra reflections, the scattering path of each wave in the residual signal is simplified as a direct scattering path from an actual or virtual transmitter (created by edge mirroring) to the damage, and then back to an actual or virtual receiver (created by edge mirroring). On this basis, the Gaussian distribution function is introduced to quantify the probabilities at each spatial node in relation to all possible damage loci. Through fusing the images obtained from all individual wave packets, the structure could be inspected with far fewer transducers compared to conventional elliptical imaging. Experimental results from carbon fiber-reinforced polymer laminates and aluminum plate are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the imaging method, where damage is correctly detected and accurately localized even with a single transmitter–receiver pair.