Localizing impact damage of composite structures with modified RAPID algorithm and non-circular PZT arrays

Detecting and localizing impact damage of composite structures is one of the key expectations towards development of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. In this paper, a method intended to meet these requirements is presented. The developed method is based on guided waves actuation in a monitored structure. One of the methods used for damage localization with guided waves is the RAPID/PRA algorithm. This algorithm is mostly used for circular arrays of PZT piezoelectric transducers. In the paper a modification of this approach, adopted to be used for more general geometries of PZT networks is presented. Its main improvement is that predicted location of damage is less biased by inhomogeneous distributions of sensing paths, i.e. lines connecting pairs of transducers of a network, than for RAPID algorithm. The developed method was verified experimentally on composite laminated specimens with introduced damage caused by low energy impact. Detailed description of the developed algorithm as well as the results of impact damage localization tests are delivered in the paper.