Structural damage identification using multifunctional Bragg grating sensors: II. Damage detection results and analysis

Damage detection is an important issue in structural health monitoring. Lamb waves are the most widely used acousto-ultrasonic guided waves for damage detection. This paper gives the results of experiments carried out to study the identification of damage using Bragg grating sensors as ultrasonic receivers of Lamb waves. The experiments involve a rectangular aluminium plate. Damage was introduced into the plate by drilling a hole into the centre of the plate. In order to obtain different severity of damage, the hole diameter was increased step by step. Several signal processing tools are presented and then applied to the Lamb wave signals in order to find a parameter that corresponds to the severity of damage. The parameter that serves as the damage index has to have small cross-sensitivity to other physical parameters, e. g. temperature. Therefore, additional experiments have been carried out to study the temperature dependence of the Lamb wave signals. In order to determine the influence of the temperature on the damage detection results, the cross-sensitivity is studied within this paper.