Guided-wave-based detections of weld and crack in steel plates

The guided-wave-based damage detection techniques using structurally integrated Lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT) patches for structural health monitoring (SHM) have been developed for many years. However, the method is still in its formative years and one of the main challenges is the application in real-word complicated structures. It's very important to widely study the techniques in the structures with simple geometries which can be used to construct more complicated structures for practical applications. In this paper, different steel plates of the same dimensions were used for detecting a 2mm-gap through-crack in welded zone and studying the effects of different impurities such as water, alcohol, epoxy and mud in the crack on wave propagations. Advanced signal processing and pattern recognition techniques such as the wavelet transform (WT) especially continuous wavelet transform (CWT) and Hilbert transform (HT) were used to enhance the efficiency of damage detections in the steel plates. Some simulation results were obtained to validate of experimental results. The results from both the experiments and simulations show the validity of the proposed method and the effects of different factors on the damage detection of the steel plates.