A Fault Location Method Using Lamb Waves and Discrete Wavelet Transform

Non-destructive evaluation methods and signal process techniques are important steps in structural health monitoring systems to assess the structure integrity. This paper presents a method for fault location in aluminum beams based on time of flight of Lamb waves. The dynamic response signal captured from the structure was processed using the discrete wavelet transform. The information accuracy obtained from the processed signal depends on the correct choice of the mother wavelet. The best mother wavelet was selected using the Shannon's entropy criterion. Numerical results for a damage localized in different positions are presented using the spectral finite element method, and an experimental setup was used to assess the accuracy of the method. The results showed that the combination of the non-destructive evaluation technique based on Lamb waves with the discrete wavelet transform is effective in detecting and locating faults in aluminum beams whose results had errors less than 1%.