Impact localization method for composite structures subjected to temperature fluctuations

A novel impact localization method is presented based on impact induced elastic waves in sensorized composite structure subjected to temperature fluctuations. In real practices, environmental and operational conditions influence the acquired signals and consequently make the feature (particularly Time of Arrival (TOA)) extraction process, complicated and troublesome. To overcome this complication, a robust TOA estimation method is proposed based on the times in which the absolute amplitude of the signal reaches to a specific amplitude value. The presented method requires prior knowledge about the normalized wave velocity in different directions of propagation. To this aim, a finite element model of the plate was built in ABAQUS/CAE. The impact location is then highlighted by calculating an error value at different points of the structure. The efficiency of the developed impact localization technique is experimentally evaluated by dropping steel balls with different energies on a carbon fiber composite plate with different temperatures. It is demonstrated that the developed technique is able to localize impacts with different energies even in the presence of noise and temperature fluctuations.