Experimental Feasibility Study for Guided Wave Propagation

The paper presents the work on Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) which is now one of the most interesting subjects. Guided propagation of mechanical waves in elastic bodies can be applied in analogy to active phased radar antennas for electromagnetic waves. An array of bonded piezoelectric transducers can generate directed mechanical waves. In the current state of this work experiments on a beam are conducted in order to verify a mathematical model based on integral transform methods. Further experiments for plates and laminates have been designed and checked for feasibility of the mechanical and the electrical implementation. (© 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)