Prediction of frequency and spatially dependent attenuation of guided waves propagating in mounted and unmounted A380 parts made up of anisotropic viscoelastic composite laminates

Monitoring damage in composite structures using guided wave-based techniques is particularly effective due to their excellent ability to propagate over relatively long distance and hence to cover a large area with few testing time and equipment. The industrialization of this method is highly tributary of the number and placement of the active elements. Yet, the optimal sensorization of a structure relies on the decrease in amplitude of guided waves over propagation distance. A reliable prediction of attenuation of guided waves is still a challenge especially for anisotropic viscoelastic composite materials which exhibit complex changes of attenuation with propagation direction and thus a spatial dependency of attenuation. In this paper, the damped global matrix method (dGMM), having stable and efficient merits, is developed to predict the frequency and spatially dependent attenuation of waves propagating in anisotropic composite materials. dGMM integrates three damping models (Hysteretic, Kelvin-Voigt, and Biot models) into the conventional undamped GMM to consider viscoelasticity of composite laminates. The proposed dGMM is first theoretically validated by numerical comparison with the semi-analytical finite element method. In addition, two industrial case studies, parts of an A380 nacelle at scale one, are employed to experimentally validate the proposed attenuation prediction method. The first one is a fan cowl structure and the second one is an inner fixed structure, both either unmounted or mounted on an actual instrumented A380 plane. This makes the validation extremely valuable for both the scientific and industrial communities. The proposed attenuation prediction method thus paves the way to optimally deploy sensor network for structural health monitoring of anisotropic viscoelastic composite structures.