S0 Mode Selective Metamaterial-Based Ultrasonic Guided Wave Damage Detection in Thin-Walled Metal Plate

The application of ultrasonic guided wave technology in damage detection in thin-walled metal plates presents multimodal complexities that result in imaging artifacts, thereby complicating damage assessment. To address this challenge, this article proposes a layered S0 mode selective metamaterial for extracting the S0 mode Lamb wave in order to detect damage in thin-walled metal plates. The regulatory layer of metamaterial can generate a single S0 mode region, allowing the excited guided wave within this frequency range to selectively propagate the S0 mode while suppressing other modes. In order to obtain a better single S0 mode region, a genetic algorithm is used to optimize the structure of the regulatory layer. The effectiveness of the S0 mode selective metamaterial is substantiated through both numerical simulations and experimental validation. Finally, a metamaterial-based reconstruction algorithm for probabilistic inspection of damage (M-RAPID) method is proposed, which uses the S0 mode wave in the array ultrasonic guided wave to accurately detect the damage of a thin-walled metal plate, reducing interference from the other modal imaging artifacts. This study represents the use of metamaterial for single-mode selection and damage imaging in nondestructive testing, highlighting the significant potential of metamaterial in this field.