Combined analytical FEM approach for efficient simulation of Lamb wave damage detection

• Published in: Ultrasonics 2016-07, Vol.69, p.116-128
• Main Authors: Shen, Yanfeng, Giurgiutiu, Victor
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Computer simulation; Damage; Damage detection; Finite element method; Guided waves; Hybrid modeling; Lamb waves; Mathematical analysis; Mathematical models; Matlab; Nondestructive evalucation; Structural health monitoring; Wave propagation
• ISSN: 0041-624X; 1874-9968
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ultras.2016.03.019

•A combined analytical FEM approach (CAFA) is developed for guided wave simulation.•Damage effects are inserted into the analytical model of guided wave propagation.•WaveFormRevealer 2-D is developed as a user-friendly simulation tool.•CAFA modeling results compared well with experiments and full scale FEM.•Efficient SHM system design and fast signal prediction can be achieved with CAFA. Lamb waves have been widely explored as a promising inspection tool for non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and structural health monitoring (SHM). This article presents a combined analytical finite element model (FEM) approach (CAFA) for the accurate, efficient, and versatile simulation of 2-D Lamb wave propagation and interaction with damage. CAFA used a global analytical solution to model wave generation, propagation, scattering, mode conversion, and detection, while the wave-damage interaction coefficients (WDICs) were extracted from harmonic analysis of local FEM with non-reflective boundaries (NRB). The analytical procedure was coded using MATLAB, and a predictive simulation tool called WaveFormRevealer 2-D was developed. The methodology of obtaining WDICs from local FEM was presented. Case studies were carried out for Lamb wave propagation in a pristine plate and a damaged plate. CAFA predictions compared well with full scale multi-physics FEM simulations and experiments with scanning laser Doppler vibrometry (SLDV), while achieving remarkable performance in computational efficiency and computer resource saving compared with conventional FEM.