Classification of solutions for guided waves in fluid-loaded viscoelastic composites with large numbers of layers

Abstract

Guided ultrasonic waves are used for the inspection of multilayered composite aerospace structures. Calculating the corresponding dispersion diagrams is challenging for thick-walled composites with more than 100 layers, such as in modern rocket booster pressure vessels. The Dispersion Calculator (DC) is an open source software for calculating such dispersion diagrams and mode shapes of guided waves. Attenuation caused by viscoelasticity and fluid-loading makes the dispersion curve tracing much more difficult than in the nonattenuated case because the modal solutions are sought in the complex wavenumber plane. The tracing problem is mastered by a reliable algorithm. Whereas leaky Lamb and Scholte waves in coupled and decoupled cases are modeled using the stiffness matrix method, shear horizontal (SH) waves are traced using the transfer matrix method without facing the numerical instability. Through implementation of mode family specific dispersion equations in both matrix techniques for nonattenuated and attenuated cases, symmetric, antisymmetric, and nonsymmetric leaky Lamb, Scholte, and SH waves can be traced separately with better efficiency and robustness. The capabilities of DC are demonstrated by calculating dispersion diagrams and mode shapes for a viscoelastic composite with 400 layers immersed in water. Results are compared against DISPERSE (Imperial College London, London, UK) for selected cases.