Lamb wave-based BVID imaging for a curved composite sandwich panel

Composite sandwich structures, consisting of a low density core sandwiched between two laminated facesheets, have been widely used in various aerospace structures. A new Lamb wave-based imaging condition, which will be referred to as the inverse incident wave energy (IIWE) imaging criterion, is proposed in this paper to resolve the situations where the incident wave energy weakly penetrates into the damaged area in the upper facesheet region. Current imaging conditions by analyzing wavefield reconstructed from laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) scanning have been proven to be adequate for imaging damage in layered composite laminates. In this research, those current imaging conditions were applied and compared in the composite foam structures for barely visible impact damage (BVID). A piezoelectric wafer was used to excite Lamb waves into the structure and a LDV was used to scan the potential damaged areas in the upper facesheet of the panel. A BVID site in a curved composite sandwich foam aileron was inspected using various wavefield analysis methods and the damage images were compared with C-scan images. A few imaging conditions that are effective for this BVID site are identified when the incident waves have difficulties penetrating into the damaged region.