Focusing phase imaging for Lamb wave phased array

In Lamb wave-based structural health monitoring, amplitude damage imaging is commonly used because the defects feature can be easily amplified by summing all the response signals together. However, the grating and side lobes affect the imaging quality and blind areas further restrict the inspection area. Considering that the existing phase-based imaging algorithms are either unfit for dispersive Lamb wave or strict to many requirements to guarantee better performance, inspired by the absence of phase information in focusing phased array, a novel focusing phase imaging (FPI) method for Lamb wave phased array is developed. The main contribution of the paper is introducing the phase information to focusing phased array. By applying the inverse-dispersion effect to the excitation signals and the superposition operation, the energy can be focused at every inspection point. The phase damage index is constructed by directly measuring the degree of consistency and alignment of the instantaneous phases. The experiments for the circular and linear array under various excitation signals with multiple defects verify that the FPI is effective for both surface damage and through-hole damage. The proposed algorithm is superior for its ability in energy focusing for defects, the capability in suppression of grating and side lobes, strong anti-disturbance ability from boundary reflection, the nonexistence of imaging blind area, and its adaptability for various excitation parameters and array layout.