Lamb Waves Signal Analysis in Structural Health Monitoring Systems
Many of the wave propagation based structural health monitoring techniques rely on some knowledge of the structure in a healthy state in order to identify damage. Baseline measurements are recorded when a structure is pristine and are stored for comparison to future data. A concern with the use of baseline subtraction methods is the ability to discern structural changes from the effects of varying environmental and operational conditions when analyzing the vibration response of a system. The use of a standard baseline subtraction technique may falsely indicate damage when environmental or operational variations are present between baseline measurements and new measurements. A procedure was outlined for the method, including excitation and recording of Lamb waves, and the use of damage detection algorithms. In this paper, several tests are performed and the results are used to help develop the damage detection algorithms previously described, and to evaluate the performance of the instantaneous baseline SHM technique. Analytical testing is first performed by feeding known input signals into each damage detection algorithm and analyzing the output data. The results of the analytical testing are used to help develop the damage detection algorithms.