The effectiveness of the continuous wavelet transform in the analysis of elastic waves

In this work, we investigate the effectiveness of the continuous wavelet transform in analyzing elastic waves, either highly dispersive or virtually non-dispersive. To extract accurate time-frequency information of highly dispersive waves, we use the complex-valued Gabor continuous wavelet transform. To pinpoint the arrival time of a virtually non-dispersive wave pulse, we use the Gaussian wavelet having two vanishing moments as the mother wavelet of the continuous wavelet transform. The waves in consideration are generated by impacts in solid circular beams. The performances of the present approaches are checked by the damage detection problems.