Impact localization and force reconstruction for composite plates based on virtual time reversal processing with time-domain spectral finite element method

Composite structures are widely used in different industries as important load-carrying components due to their excellent performance. These structures are prone to be damaged under low-velocity impacts with invisible cracks. Hence, impact identification is a critical part of composite structural health monitoring. In this paper, an approach is developed, which is based on time-reversal (T-R) processing and time-domain spectral finite element method. The spatial and temporal focusing properties of T-R are utilized to locate the impact source and restore the impact force, respectively. Moreover, the impact energy is evaluated by establishing the function of impact force and kinetic energy at the impact moment. The proposed method is validated experimentally for different scenarios. The influences of the signal length and accuracy of the numerical model on the proposed method are discussed in detail. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can correctly locate the impact source in composite structures, and the identified impact force can reproduce the impact event efficiently. The impact localization is essentially independent of the effect of signal length while it is vulnerable to the mesh grid. Besides, the developed method has consistent results in the case of data perturbation of material properties in the numerical model, which shows its good robustness.