Performance Assessment for a Guided Wave-Based SHM System Applied to a Stiffened Composite Structure

Inka Mueller; Vittorio Memmolo; Kilian Tschöke; Maria Moix-Bonet; Kathrin Möllenhoff; Mikhail Golub; Ramanan Sridaran Venkat; Yevgeniya Lugovtsova; Artem Eremin; Jochen Moll

doi:10.3390/s22197529

Performance Assessment for a Guided Wave-Based SHM System Applied to a Stiffened Composite Structure

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Oct 4;22(19):7529. doi: 10.3390/s22197529.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Mechanics, Bochum University of Applied Sciences, Am Hochschulcampus 1, 44801 Bochum, Germany.
² Aerospace Structures and Materials Laboratory, Department of Industrial Engineering, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Via Claudio 21, 80125 Naples, Italy.
³ Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS, Maria-Reiche-Str. 2, 01109 Dresden, Germany.
⁴ Institute of Composite Structures and Adaptive Systems, German Aerospace Center (DLR), 38108 Braunschweig, Germany.
⁵ Mathematical Institute, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany.
⁶ Institute for Mechanics, Mathematics and Computer Sciences, Kuban State University, 350040 Krasnodar, Russia.
⁷ Department of Non-Destructive Testing & Quality Assurance, Saarland University, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.
⁸ Department of Non-Destructive Testing, Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung, Unter den Eichen 87, 12205 Berlin, Germany.
⁹ Department of Physics, Goethe University Frankfurt, Max von Laue Str. 1, 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Abstract

To assess the ability of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems, a variety of prerequisites and contributing factors have to be taken into account. Within this publication, this variety is analyzed for actively introduced guided wave-based SHM systems. For these systems, it is not possible to analyze their performance without taking into account their structure and their applied system parameters. Therefore, interdependencies of performance assessment are displayed in an SHM pyramid based on the structure and its monitoring requirements. Factors influencing the quality, capability and reliability of the monitoring system are given and put into relation with state-of-the-art performance analysis in a non-destructive evaluation. While some aspects are similar and can be treated in similar ways, others, such as location, environmental condition and structural dependency, demand novel solutions. Using an open-access data set from the Open Guided Waves platform, a detailed method description and analysis of path-based performance assessment is presented.The adopted approach clearly begs the question about the decision framework, as the threshold affects the reliability of the system. In addition, the findings show the effect of the propagation path according to the damage position. Indeed, the distance of damage directly affects the system performance. Otherwise, the propagation direction does not alter the potentiality of the detection approach despite the anisotropy of composites. Nonetheless, the finite waveguide makes it necessary to look at the whole paths, as singular phenomena associated with the reflections may appear. Numerical investigation helps to clarify the centrality of wave mechanics and the necessity to take sensor position into account as an influencing factor. Starting from the findings achieved, all the issues are discussed, and potential future steps are outlined.

Keywords: guided ultrasounic waves; path-based analysis; probability of detection (POD); reliability assessment; structural health monitoring (SHM).

MeSH terms

Anisotropy
Monitoring, Physiologic
Reproducibility of Results*

Grants and funding

The collaboration of the authors was supported by the DFG within the Scientific Network “Towards a holistic quality assessment for guided wave-based SHM” (project number 424954879).