Nonpenetrating Damage Identification Using Hybrid Lamb Wave Modes from Hilbert-Huang Spectrum in Thin-Walled Structures

Lamb waves have shown promising advantages for damage identification in thin-walled structures. Multiple modes of Lamb wave provide diverse sensitivities to different types of damage. To sufficiently utilize damage-related wave features, damage indices were developed by using hybrid Lamb wave modes from Hilbert-Huang spectra. Damage indices were defined as surface integrals of Hilbert-Huang spectra on featured regions determined by time and frequency windowing. The time windowing was performed according to individual propagation velocity of different Lamb wave mode, while the frequency windowing was performed according to the frequency of excitation. By summing damage indices for all transmitter-receiver pairs, pixels were calculated to reconstruct a damage map to characterize the degree of damage at each location on structure. Both numerical and experimental validations were conducted to identify a nonpenetrating damage. The results demonstrated that the proposed damage indices using hybrid Lamb wave modes are more sensitive and robust than the one using single Lamb wave mode.