Peri-Elastodynamic Simulations of Guided Ultrasonic Waves in Plate-Like Structure with Surface Mounted PZT

Subir Patra; Hossain Ahmed; Sourav Banerjee

doi:10.3390/s18010274

Peri-Elastodynamic Simulations of Guided Ultrasonic Waves in Plate-Like Structure with Surface Mounted PZT

Sensors (Basel). 2018 Jan 18;18(1):274. doi: 10.3390/s18010274.

Authors

Subir Patra¹, Hossain Ahmed², Sourav Banerjee³

Affiliations

¹ Integrated Material Assessment and Predictive Simulation Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. spatra@email.sc.edu.
² Integrated Material Assessment and Predictive Simulation Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. hahmed@email.sc.edu.
³ Integrated Material Assessment and Predictive Simulation Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. banerjes@email.sc.edu.

Abstract

Peridynamic based elastodynamic computation tool named Peri-elastodynamics is proposed herein to simulate the three-dimensional (3D) Lamb wave modes in materials for the first time. Peri-elastodynamics is a nonlocal meshless approach which is a scale-independent generalized technique to visualize the acoustic and ultrasonic waves in plate-like structure, micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) and nanodevices for their respective characterization. In this article, the characteristics of the fundamental Lamb wave modes are simulated in a sample plate-like structure. Lamb wave modes are generated using a surface mounted piezoelectric (PZT) transducer which is actuated from the top surface. The proposed generalized Peri-elastodynamics method is not only capable of simulating two dimensional (2D) in plane wave under plane strain condition formulated previously but also capable of accurately simulating the out of plane Symmetric and Antisymmetric Lamb wave modes in plate like structures in 3D. For structural health monitoring (SHM) of plate-like structures and nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of MEMS devices, it is necessary to simulate the 3D wave-damage interaction scenarios and visualize the different wave features due to damages. Hence, in addition, to simulating the guided ultrasonic wave modes in pristine material, Lamb waves were also simulated in a damaged plate. The accuracy of the proposed technique is verified by comparing the modes generated in the plate and the mode shapes across the thickness of the plate with theoretical wave analysis.

Keywords: computational NDE, structural health monitoring (SHM); frequency-wavenumber; lamb wave; nondestructive evaluation (NDE), ultrasonics; peri-elastodynamics; peridynamic; wave propagation.