Biologically inspired structural diagnostics through beamforming with phased transducer arrays

This paper discusses research in the use of biologically inspired spatial phased transducer arrays for the nondestructive evaluation of homogeneous and heterogeneous structural components. It is shown that beamforming, which is used by orb web spiders to locate their prey in a network of web fibers, can be achieved by applying weights and time delays to the tapped signals from a transducer array in a narrow frequency band to obtain desired directional sensitivities and optimal array gains. The resulting spatio-temporal filters are then used to detect, locate and quantify structural damage. The theory of beamsteering and beamforming for processing propagating wave data in damaged elastic media is discussed. Experimental results for homogeneous and heterogeneous plates are given to verify the theoretical discussions. Design considerations for the phased arrays are examined as are the benefits of nonlinear array geometries for better spatial coverage. The advantage of using adaptive over conventional beamforming is demonstrated with a Frost Constraint adaptive technique.