Multifrequency Identification and Exploitation in Lamb Wave Inspection

Lamb wave inspection provides a promising method to assess the structural health status. However, Lamb wave modes exhibit different characteristics which vary with frequency significantly. The best excitation frequency usually cannot be determined in specific applications. This work proposes a multifrequency exploitation and identification method. Lamb waves of multiple frequencies are excitated simultaneously to utilize diverse attributes of Lamb waves in different frequency ranges. This paper firstly analyzes the detectability and sensitivity of Lamb wave. Then the multifrequency exploitation scheme and corresponding post-processing method are introduced. Relevant simulations by finite element method are conducted to verify its effectiveness. Experiments of single-frequency and multifrequency excitations are implemented. The investigations indicate that the proposed method can avoid the missing of defects compared with single-frequency excitation. In addition, a post-processing method is suggested and the results demonstrate that the multifrequency excitation also provides high accuracy in defect location.