Combined analytical FEM approach for efficient simulation of Lamb wave damage detection

Lamb waves have been widely explored as a promising inspection tool for non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and structural health monitoring (SHM). This article presents a combined analytical finite element model (FEM) approach (CAFA) for the accurate, efficient, and versatile simulation of 2-D Lamb wave propagation and interaction with damage. CAFA used a global analytical solution to model wave generation, propagation, scattering, mode conversion, and detection, while the wave-damage interaction coefficients (WDICs) were extracted from harmonic analysis of local FEM with non-reflective boundaries (NRB). The analytical procedure was coded using MATLAB, and a predictive simulation tool called WaveFormRevealer 2-D was developed. The methodology of obtaining WDICs from local FEM was presented. Case studies were carried out for Lamb wave propagation in a pristine plate and a damaged plate. CAFA predictions compared well with full scale multi-physics FEM simulations and experiments with scanning laser Doppler vibrometry (SLDV), while achieving remarkable performance in computational efficiency and computer resource saving compared with conventional FEM.