A new ultrasonic propagation system has been constructed using macrofiber composite (MFC) actuators and fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors. The MFCs and FBGs can be integrated into composite laminates because of their small size and high fracture strain. The developed system can send and receive broadband Lamb waves. In this research, this system was used to detect delamination damage in composite laminates. First, the multiple modes of Lamb waves in a carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) quasi-isotropic laminate were identified by transmitting and receiving the symmetric and antisymmetric modes separately. Then, the mode conversions at both tips of a delamination were investigated through an experiment and a two-dimensional finite element analysis (FEA). A new delamination detection method was proposed on the basis of the mode conversions, and experiments were carried out on laminates with an artificial delamination. When antisymmetric modes were excited, the frequency dispersion of the received A 1 mode changed, depending on the delamination length owing to the mode conversion between the A 1 mode and the S 0 mode. This phenomenon was confirmed through the FEA and these results prove that this new method is effective in detecting a delamination in CFRP laminates.
Ultrasonic wave-sensing technology has been applied for the health monitoring of composite structures, using normal fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors with a high-speed wavelength interrogation system of arrayed waveguide grating (AWG) filters; however, researchers are required to average thousands of repeated measurements to distinguish significant signals. To resolve this bottleneck problem, this study established a signal-processing strategy that improves the signal-to-noise ratio for the one-time measured signal of ultrasonic waves, by application of parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) technology that produces unique multiway decomposition without additional orthogonal or independent constraints. Through bandpass processing of the AWG filter and complex wavelet transforms, ultrasonic wave signals are preprocessed as time, phase, and frequency profiles, and then decomposed into a series of conceptual three-way atoms by PARAFAC. While an ultrasonic wave results in a Bragg wavelength shift, antiphase fluctuations can be observed at two adjacent AWG ports. Thereby, concentrating on antiphase features among the three-way atoms, a fitting atom can be chosen and then restored to three-way profiles as a final result. An experimental study has revealed that the final result is consistent with the conventional 1024-data averaging signal, and relative error evaluation has indicated that the signal-to-noise ratio of ultrasonic waves can be significantly improved.
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