Combined Inspection and Data Communication Network for Lamb-Wave Structural Health Monitoring

Guided ultrasound waves have long been studied in the context of structural health monitoring (SHM). More recently, they have also been proposed for the acoustic data communication. This paper aims at a joint approach combining guided-wave damage inspection with the acoustic data communication. In this work, a network of autonomous transceiver nodes is modeled that represents a part of an SHM system where the available bandwidth is divided into inspection and communication frequencies. The presented communication protocol is insensitive to dispersion and multipath interference that commonly hamper Lamb-wave signal processing. Experimental results include the successful detection of different damage types at several positions on a metallic plate. Moreover, the communication of the data, namely, damage indicators, across the distributed nodes to a central downstream port is shown. Finally, a numerical study regarding the dynamic behavior of autonomous sensor networks is presented.