Waveguide damage detection by the matching pursuit using the Gaussian chirp pulses

Guided-waves have been widely used for the long-range nondestructive health inspection of various waveguides. Though nondispersive waves are best for damage detection, transmitted waves are often dispersed as they travel a long distance. The objective of this work is to develop an advanced technique to deal with dispersed pulses for guided-wave nondestructive evaluation. To this end, chirp functions are proposed to simulate dispersed pulses. The parameters of the chirp functions simulating dispersed pulses are determined by the matching pursuit method. Then, the damage location can be directly estimated from the parameter characterizing the pulse arrival time. The performance of the present approach is checked by the actual damage detection in a cracked cylinder.