Health monitoring of smart composite structures using ultrasonic guided waves

The health of a structure depends on both the homogeneously distributed degradation of its mechanical properties during its life cycle and the presence of localised defects such as cracks or delaminations. The proposed non-destructive health monitoring method allows to recover both kinds of information using ultrasonic waves. To avoid traditional techniques limitations. such as coupling reproducibility for instance, we propose here to integrate a piezoelectric element into the plate like composite structure. The element dimensions are determined in order to uncouple the frequency ranges of the thickness and radial vibration modes. The thickness mode is used to monitor the homogeneous ageing of the structure through electrical impedance measurement. As for the radial vibrations, they are used to generate and detect Lamb waves, which have the advantage of propagating over long distances and offering specific sensitivity of various modes to different kinds of defects. The present work focuses on this last application and studies the ability of the proposed technique to detect and identify defects such as low speed impact-induced delaminations and cracks in composite plate-like structures.