Efficient Use of Lamb Waves and Their Wavelet Coefficients for Damage Detection of Steel Plates

강 구조물의 손상 검색을 위한 램 웨이브와 웨이브렛 계수의 효율적인 사용

For the in-situ health monitoring of critical members in civil infra-structures, ultrasonic guided Lamb waves-based non-destructive evaluation (NDE) is very suitable. However, a chief drawback of the Lamb wave techniques is that multiple modes exist at all frequencies and the modes are generally dispersive, which means that the received signals may be very complicated. To overcome these complications, selective transmitting and receiving of a single A/sub 0/ mode within a frequency range can be adopted. Furthermore, a wavelet technique can be utilized to decompose the Lamb wave response into wavelet coefficients as a tool for signal processing. The changes in the Lamb waves interacting with damages in the steel plates are successfully characterized by this wavelet technique, through the amplitude change of the wavelet coefficients. In this paper, the feasibility of detecting a line crack on the surface of a steel plate and loosened bolts in a joint steel specimen using the Lamb waves and the wavelet technique is investigated.