Simulation of asymmetric Lamb waves for sensing and actuation in plates

Two approaches used for monitoring the health of thin aerospace structures are active interrogation and passive monitoring. The active interrogation approach generates and receives diagnostic Lamb waves to detect damage, while the passive monitoring technique listens for acoustic waves caused by damage growth. For the application of both methods, it is necessary to understand how Lamb waves propagate through a structure. In this paper, a Physics-Based Model (PBM) using classical plate theory is developed to provide a basic understanding of the actual physical process of asymmetric Lamb mode wave generation and propagation in a plate. The closed-form model uses modal superposition to simulate waves generated by piezoceramic patches and by simulated acoustic emissions. The generation, propagation, reflection, interference, and the sensing of the waves are represented in the model, but damage is not explicitly modeled. The developed model is expected to be a useful tool for the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) community, particularly for studying high frequency acoustic wave generation and propagation in lieu of Finite Element models and other numerical models that require significant computational resources. The PBM is capable of simulating many possible scenarios including a variety of test cases, whereas experimental measurements of all of the cases can be costly and time consuming. The model also incorporates the sensor measurement effect, which is an important aspect in damage detection. Continuous and array sensors are modeled, which are efficient for measuring waves because of their distributed nature.