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Identification of Elastic Properties of Composites by Inversion of Ultrasonic Guided Wave Data

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Abstract

Background

Given the inherent manufacturing variabilities and potential for in-service damage of composite parts, the identification of the elastic properties of composites is important to ensuring the safety and the proper performance of the part.

Objective

The primary objective of this manuscript is to determine, nondestructively, the elastic properties of composite parts, whether as in-situ components that are part of a larger system, or as laboratory coupons.

Methods

The proposed technique is based on multimode and dispersive ultrasonic guided waves propagating along a single direction, and the inversion of their phase velocity dispersion curves. The inversion procedure utilizes an efficient Semi-Analytical Finite Element method to solve the forward problem, and a Simulated Annealing algorithm as the optimization tool. The method is particularly well-suited for the characterization of composite laminates. In particular, the manuscript presents experimental evidence of the effectiveness of this technique, that was suggested earlier in a solely numerical work previously conducted by the authors.

Results

The test results show that reasonable accuracy can be obtained in the identification of four in-plane and three out-of-plane engineering constants of a quasi-isotropic laminate and a highly anisotropic laminate utilizing the single wave propagation direction. Non-obvious sensitivities of certain wave modes to particular constants are explained on the basis of stress coupling phenomena that are revealed by the SAFE wave propagation models.

Conclusions

The study gives experimental evidence of the suitability of ultrasonic guided wave inversion schemes to identify the engineering constants of laminated composites, with the potential to properly characterize parts in-situ, because of the insensitivity of guided waves to boundary conditions located outside of the transmitter–receiver path.

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Funding

This work was funded in part by the US Federal Aviation Administration Joint Center of Excellence for Advanced Materials (FAA Cooperative Agreement 12-C-AM-UCSD) and by the US Federal Railroad Administration (contract # 693JJ619C000008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Experimental Mechanics & NDE Laboratory, Department of Structural Engineering, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, MC 0085, La Jolla, CA, 92093, USA

    R. Cui & F. Lanza di Scalea

Authors
  1. R. Cui
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  2. F. Lanza di Scalea
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Ranting Cui and Francesco Lanza di Scalea. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ranting Cui and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Changes in the revised version were made by Francesco Lanza di Scalea with the new figures made by Ranting Cui. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to F. Lanza di Scalea.

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Cui, R., Lanza di Scalea, F. Identification of Elastic Properties of Composites by Inversion of Ultrasonic Guided Wave Data. Exp Mech 61, 803–816 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11340-021-00700-1

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