ADVANCED MULTIFIELD MODELS FOR WAVE PROPAGATION ANALYSIS IN SMART COMPOSITE PANELS
Résumé
The use of non-destructive techniques (NDTs) is essential in health monitoring applications. This ensures the inspection of the examined structure without inflicting damage. As ultrasonic wave propagation has been widely used in such applications, it is crucial to understand the modelling parameters for such phenomenon. To accomplish this, higher order finite element models based on the Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF) have been used to study the Lamb wave propagation in composite panels, in a coupled electro-mechanical model where the surface mounted actuators and sensors were modelled. Both fundamental symmetric (S0) and antisymmetric (A0) Lamb wave propagations were considered. The convergence of the plate model was studied under different modelling parameters, including mesh density, to-the-thickness kinematic model and the number of timesteps. The results show that the use of higher order models is necessary to obtain a systematic low error in comparison with the analytical group velocity obtained from the material dispersion curves.