• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.47-55
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• 2012

A structural health monitoring technique for locating impact position in a plate structure is presented in this paper. The method employs a single sensor and spatial focusing of time reversal (TR) acoustics. We first examine the TR focusing effect at the impact position and its surroundings through simulation and experiment. The imaging results of impact points show that the impact source location can be accurately estimated in any position of the plate. Compared to existing techniques for locating impact or acoustic emission source, the proposed method has the benefits of using a single sensor and not requiring material properties and geometry of structures. Furthermore, it does not depend on a particular mode of dispersive Lamb waves that is frequently used in other ultrasonic testings of plate-like structures.