A Lamb Wave Wavenumber-Searching Method for a Linear PZT Sensor Array

In this paper, a wavenumber-searching method based on time-domain compensation is proposed to obtain the wavenumber of the Lamb wave array received signal. In the proposed method, the time-domain sampling signal of the linear piezoelectric transducer (PZT) sensor array is converted into a spatial sampling signal using the searching wavenumber. The two-dimensional time-spatial-domain Lamb wave received signal of the linear PZT sensor array is then converted into a one-dimensional synthesized spatial sampling signal. Further, the sum of squared errors between the synthesized spatial sampling signal and its Morlet wavelet fitting signal is calculated at each searching wavenumber. Finally, the wavenumber of the Lamb wave array received signal is obtained as the searching wavenumber corresponding to the minimum error. This method was validated on a 2024-T3 aluminum alloy. The validation results showed that the proposed method can successfully obtain the wavenumber of the Lamb wave array received signal, whose spatial sampling rate does not satisfy the Nyquist sampling theorem; the wavenumber error does not exceed 2.2 rad/m. Damage localization based on the proposed method was also validated on a carbon fiber composite laminate plate, and the maximum damage localization error was no more than 2.11 cm.