Piezoelectric Coupled LISA for Guided Wave Generation and Propagation

Recently there has been an increased utilization of composite structures in aerospace and other industries due to their superior physical attributes compared to traditional metallic structures. This has spurred the need for structural health monitoring (SHM) systems to support structural integrity. Guided wave (GW) based techniques for health monitoring have shown to be reliable and promising. The local interaction simulation approach (LISA), a finite difference based numerical method, has been proven to be efficient in modeling GW propagation in isotropic and composite plate structures. Piezoelectric actuators are traditionally used to generate GW in structures. In this work, iterative equations which form the basis of the LISA method are derived for a generic orthotropic laminated structure with a piezoelectric actuator on top. The piezoelectric actuator is modeled by considering the coupled electromechanical equations.