Piezoelectric transducer embedded in a composite plate: Application to Lamb wave generation

The aim of this paper is to show that Lamb waves may be effectively generated using piezoelectric transducers embedded inside a composite plate, for nondestructive evaluation and health monitoring applications. A cylindrical transducer embedded in a composite host plate is considered. The electrical impedance of the transducer alone in vacuum and then of the embedded transducer, which allows the identification of the resonance modes, have been obtained by the finite element method (FEM). Moreover, the displacement fields in the plate, which allow the identification of the types of Lamb waves, have been computed at the resonance frequencies. Comparison between the FEM results and the Lamb wave dispersion curves of the host material are in good agreement. Experimental results (electrical impedance, frequency response, and phase velocities) concerning a composite plate specimen containing the same piezoelectric transducer inside it are shown. A good agreement is generally obtained between numerical and experimental results. In addition, it has been shown that the radial mode of the embedded transducer, which has a high coupling coefficient(around 50%), can be used to generate S-0 Lamb waves. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.