Diagnostic imaging for structural damage

There has been increasing awareness of the use of intuitional imaging techniques to describe a damage event in the engineered structures. A Lamb wave-based diagnostic imaging approach was developed in this study, by fusing the prior probabilities established by the sensors of an active sensor network at different spatial positions of the structure under inspection. Rather than pinpointing the damage location and shape with definitive parameters, such an approach was intended to probabilistically predict the occurrence of a damage event, which is in nature more consistent with the implication of 'estimating' damage in SHM than traditional approaches. As validation, the approach was employed to detect mono- and dual-delamination in CF/EP laminates, and the results were represented in probability contour diagrams, where the structural damage became intuitional. Other major benefits of the approach include the independence of its effectiveness on the number of damage and enhanced tolerance to noise/uncertainties.