Nonlinear-Lamb-wave-based plastic damage detection assisted by topologically designed metamaterial filters

Owing to their high sensitivity to material microstructural defects, nonlinear guided waves (NGWs) show great promise for the early detection of incipient damages, conducive to numerous structural health monitoring (SHM) applications. In an SHM system, however, inevitable non-damage-related nonlinear sources exist, which may overwhelm the damage-induced nonlinear components and in turn jeopardize the practical efficacy of the detection methodology. Therefore, these deceptive nonlinear interferences need to be mitigated or eliminated as much as practically possible. By embracing the concept of metamaterials, a wave filtering device, referred to as a meta-filter (MF), is developed in this paper. The MF is constructed through mounting periodic stubs on the surface of the structure under inspection to condition the probing signals under the second harmonic Lamb-wave-based SHM paradigm. Through topological optimization, the MF enables ultra-wide stop bands to eliminate the second harmonic Lamb waves of the probing waves while preserving their strong fundamental wave components. The band structure and the underlying mechanism, alongside the MF-enabled wave properties, are numerically investigated. Upon tactically introducing deceptive nonlinear sources such as the nonlinear adhesive bonding layers in a piezoelectric transducer-activated SHM system, the performance of the MF is examined from the SHM perspective, which is finally validated experimentally using a metal specimen containing local plasticized incipient damage. Results demonstrate that the designed MF allows for flexible selection of the excitation frequency on one hand, and entails significant enhancement of the detection ability of the NGW-based SHM system on the other hand owing to the customized band features arising from the topological optimization.