Lamb wave-based damage localization and quantification algorithms for CFRP composite structures

Accurately and quantitatively monitoring the damages in complicated composite structures is very challenging, but essential for assessing their integrity. In this paper, an innovative damage monitoring method based on Lamb wave is proposed for large-scale complicated composite laminates. A combination of a resource-constraint Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm associated with a quantum-inspired gravitational search algorithm is introduced to identify the damage location. A damage contour algorithm using convex envelope of damage reflection points and maximum inscribed n-polygon is developed to determine the quantitative damage size. Meanwhile, a singular loci removal scheme based on an automatically updated boundary region constraint and bivariate normal distribution is utilized to separate the correctly positioned points on the damage periphery from those associated with noise. Experiments on two large-scale composite panels with multiple damage cases are conducted to substantiate the proposed algorithms. Sensor layers with embedded piezoelectric transducer (PZT) sensor networks mounted on the structures are employed to excite and receive Lamb wave signals because of their superiority of flexibility, electrical stability and apt for complex structures. The results demonstrate that the proposed technique is capable of pinpointing both location and size of the damage in the complicated composite structures.