A Two-step Inverse Method for Quantitative Damage Evaluation of Plate-like Structures Using Vibration Approach

Abstract

This study presents a novel two-step approach to assess plate-like structural laminar damages, particularly for delamination damage detection of composite structures. Firstly, a 2-D continuous wavelet transform is employed to identify the damage location and sizes from vibration curvature data. An inverse method is subsequently then used to determine the bending stiffness reduction ratio along a specified direction, enabling the quantification of the delamination severity. The method employed in this study is an extension from the one-dimensional inverse method developed in a previous work of the authors. The applicability of the two-step inverse approach is demonstrated in a simulation analysis and by an experimental study on a cantilever composite plate containing a single delamination. The inverse method is shown to have the capacity to reveal the detailed damage information of delamination within a constrained searching space and can be used to determine the effective flexural stiffness of composite plate structures, even in cases of complex delamination damage.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.