Novel Method for Simulation of Lamb Wave Propagation Generated by an Interdigital Transducer

Recent years have brought great changes in the approach to the systems condition monitoring. Instead of using temporary attached sensors for scheduled technical inspection more and more often permanent health monitoring systems are mounted on structures. One of the techniques used for structural health monitoring systems is the Lamb waves-based technique. In this paper a novel method for modeling and simulation of complex shape transducers, used for the Lamb waves excitation and sensing, is presented and illustrated on the example of Interdigital Transducer (IDT). The proposed method is computationally efficient - it allows for an approximate prediction of the wave-field generated by an arbitrary-shaped transducer in a relatively short time.