1484. Ultrasonic phased array with dispersion compensation for monitoring multiple damages in structures.

Multiple-damage-inflicted scattering signals usually overlap with each other due to Lamb wave dispersion and multi-mode characteristics. As a result, it is difficult to accurately distinguish damages that occur relatively close to each other using the conventional ultrasonic phased array method. In order to solve this problem, an improved linear mapping (ILM) dispersion compensation method is proposed and is applied to enhance the ultrasonic phased array monitoring resolution. Through a uniform linear array arrangement, the damage scattering signals are collected in a round-robin pattern of ultrasonic phased array, and then compensated based on the linear relation wavenumber curve from actual measurement. At last, the scan can be obtained by monitoring the energy scattered by the damages using delay-and-sum method. To verify the proposed method, experiments are performed on an aluminum (LY-12) plate. Two results of multiple artificial damages show that the proposed method can effectively compensate the dispersion characteristics of Lamb waves. The direction estimation error and distance estimation error are less than 4° and 2 cm, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]