Experimental Identification of Damage in Single Lap Joint

This work aims at presenting the development of an analytical model for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) to evaluate damages on Single Lap Joints (SLJs). A transient waves technique is proposed for assessing debonding area in 3D aluminium SLJ. This approach is based on the interference of elastic Lamb waves generated by piezoelectric (PZT) sensors attached onto the surface of the thin joint and travelling through the adhesion area. The SO Lamb mode is used to investigate the integrity of adhesive in bonded zone. Several transient wave packets with different driving frequencies were used to investigate bonded area. The main advantage of the proposed model is the ability to easily evaluate the length and position of a damage. Experimental campaign revealed that for fixed disbond length there is a given driving frequency at which the wave packet is attenuated. The main result is the simplicity of the proposed approach, interesting for future applications (i.e., online SHM on working structures).