SHM is defined as “an emerging technology that can be defined as continuous, autonomous, real time, in-service monitoring of the physical condition of a structure by means of embedded or attached sensors with minimum manual intervention” .SHM provides the ability of a system to detect adverse changes within a system’s structure to enhance reliability and reduce maintenance costs. There are different Non-Destructive techniques like acoustic emission, ultrasonic, acousto-ultrasonic, guided ultrasonic waves or Lamb waves which are nowadays investigated for the development of an efficient and user-friendly damage identification system. This paper deals with the latter which is based on Lamb wave propagation. It has been developed especially for distinguishing different kinds of damages. The Lamb wave-based active SHM method uses piezoelectric (PZT) sensors to transmit and receive Lamb waves in a thin Aluminum plate. The Lamb wave modes (AO &SO) travel into the structure and are reflected by the structural boundaries, discontinuities, and damage. By studying their propagation and reflection, the presence of defect in the structure is determined. Laboratory level experiments have been carried out on thin Aluminum plates with angular, horizontal and vertical defect. The obtained waveform is filtered to avoid unwanted noise & disturbances using Savitzky-Golay filtering. The filtered waveforms are compared to differentiate the defects. Short Time Fourier Transform has been carried out on the acquired waveform. This study provides significant insight into the problem of identifying localized damages in the structure using PZT and dispersion of signal after they interact with different types of damage. Those small defects like the horizontal one that may be nearly missed in time domain analysis can also be clearly identified in the STFT analysis. Moreover the occurrence of So mode is also clearly seen. Thus, Lamb waves generated by PZT sensors and time-frequency analysis techniques could be used effectively for damage detection in aluminum plate. This study has given a complete idea of the working and the basic requirements of SHM system.
