Modeling lamb wave propagation in visco-elastic composite plates using a fifth-order plate theory

• Published in: Ultrasonics 2021-09, Vol.116, p.106482-106482, Article 106482
• Main Authors: Orta, Adil Han, Vandendriessche, Jeroen, Kersemans, Mathias, Van Paepegem, Wim, Roozen, Nicolaas Bernardus, Van Den Abeele, Koen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Composites; Higher order plate theory; Lamb waves; Structural Health Monitoring (SHM); Viscoelastic materials
• ISSN: 0041-624X; 1874-9968
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ultras.2021.106482

A new extension of the shear deformation theory to fifth order in order to calculate the spectrum of Lamb waves in orthotropic media over a wide frequency range is developed and analyzed. The aspiration of the proposed method is to create an alternative framework to exhaustive 3D elasticity based solutions by increasing computational efficiency without losing accuracy, nor robustness. A new computational framework is introduced which allows to estimate the dispersion curves for the first nine symmetric and nine anti-symmetric Lamb modes. Analytically calculated dispersion curves using 5-SDT for different propagation directions and polar plots for selected frequency of different materials are compared with the results from both the semi analytical finite element method, and lower order shear deformation theories. Careful analysis for individual laminae and for symmetric composite laminates exhibits a good agreement between the new higher order plate theory and the semi analytical finite element method over an extensive frequency range. In addition, attenuation plots show that the proposed method can also be used for visco-elastic materials (or highly damped materials). The advantage of the new higher order plate theory and its numerical implementation is that it is much more computationally efficient compared to comprehensive methods as Lamb wave polar plots of composite plates as function of incidence angle, polar angle and frequency can be calculated in less than a second on a standard laptop. Consequently, the use of this framework in inversion routines opens up the possibility of quasi real-time Structural Health Monitoring for visco-elastic composites covering a sufficiently wide frequency range. •Novel 5th order shear deformation theory (5-SDT) to model multilayered plate waves•New computational framework based on the standard reduction method•Estimate of dispersion curves for first nine S and A modes in less than a second•Simultaneous estimate of attenuation and loss factor for viscoelastic materials•5-SDT results in good agreement with the semi analytical finite element method