Delamination Detection in a Laminated Carbon Composite Plate Using Lamb Wave by Lead-Free Piezoceramic Transducers

The present study develops a semi-instantaneous baseline damage identification approach to identify the delamination damage. An active sensing network with (Ba0.95Ca0.05)(Ti0.91Sn0.09)O3 (BCTS) lead-free piezoelectric transducers that were mounted on the two undamaged and damaged (with the delamination) plates. The wavelet transform was used for extracting the energy ratio change which is an effective and robust characteristic from the collected time-domain signals. The “identicality coefficient” (IC) was obtained for each sensing path under pristine structural conditions and used to eliminate any inequalities in the signals of each path. The output wave signals of samples were investigated by experiment and the finite element method. The values of the index produced by damages were significant against the threshold value set. The errors were less than 4%, which may be related to the linear relationship considered for the DI and delamination damage. A comparative of sensing paths showed a significant difference between both healthy and damaged samples. The delaminated damage was detected because the delamination phenomenon increased the amplitude of the wave and the wave energy. The comparison of the “damage index” (DI) values of six sensing paths showed that the path with delamination damage had the highest DI value i.e., 0.92 and then the sensing paths closest to the damage showed the highest DI values (DI=0.67). The path with a distance farther from the damage shows DI=0.09. The other DI values of other sensing paths were close to zero (DI=0) due to no damage.