On time reversal-based signal enhancement for active lamb wave-based damage identification

Lamb waves have been a promising candidate for quantitative damage identification for various engineering structures, taking advantage of their superb capabilities of traveling for long distances with fast propagation and low attenuation. However, the application of Lamb waves in damage identification so far has been hampered by the fact that the characteristic signals associated with defects are generally weaker compared with those arising from boundary reflections, mode conversions and environmental noises, making it a tough task to achieve satisfactory damage identification from the time series. With awareness of this challenge, this paper proposes a time reversal-based technique to enhance the strength of damage-scattered signals, which has been previously applied to bulk wave-based damage detection successfully. The investigation includes (i) an analysis of Lamb wave propagation in a plate, generated by PZT patches mounted on the structure; (ii) an introduction of the time reversal theory dedicated for waveform reconstruction with a narrow-band input; (iii) a process of enhancing damage-scattered signals based on time reversal focalization; and (iv) the experimental investigation of the proposed approach to enhance the damage identification on a composite plate. The results have demonstrated that signals scattered by delamination in the composite plate can be enhanced remarkably with the assistance of the proposed process, benefiting from which the damage in the plate is identified with ease and high precision.