Investigating the Feasibility of Ultrasonic Shear Actuation for Evaluation of Adhesive Joints in Multilayered Structures: FE Simulation

摘要

This paper presents an investigation into the use of shear actuated piezoelectric transducers for damage detection in adhesive joints of a multilayered structure. The finite element method is used to simulate shear-mode piezoelectric transducers embedded in the bondline of a double-layer aluminum structure. The piezoelectric transducers made of lead zirconate titanate were actuated and sensed in shear, generating antisymmetric guided Lamb waves in a pitch-catch configuration. To evaluate the proposed approach, the influence of several damage cases on wave propagation were investigated including void, vertical crack, disbond, and kissing bonds. The waveform signals produced by numerical simulations were inspected to detect the presence of damage using a damage index based on the root mean square deviation method. The simulation results indicated the proposed approach is capable of detecting all of the damage forms inspected to varying degrees and could be a promising approach for structural health monitoring of adhesively bonded joints.