Guided wave diagnosis in composite grid structure with embedded FBG sensors

The authors tried to construct a structural health monitoring (SHM) system to identify damage in composite grid structure called Advanced Grid Structure (AGS) by using two types of guided waves, compressional and flexural waves, propagating along ribs of AGS. Fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors network embedded in AGS is utilized as their receivers. AGS is defined as trussed structures whose ribs are made of Carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP). AGS has often been applied to aerospace structures because it is structurally effective and redundant. The authors had reported one possible method of SHM of AGS by monitoring of static strain distribution with embedded FBG sensors network in AGS. In this paper, we propose another possible method of SHM of AGS. We utilized two types of guided waves, compressional and flexural waves, for damage diagnosis. First, we verified our proposed system experimentally. The results confirmed that FBG sensors could measure both elastic waves and two types of guided waves were generated with the proposed system. Then, some basic characteristics of compressional and flexural wave propagations were clarified experimentally to find that compressional wave has directionality and flexural wave has isotropy. Based on the characteristics, the authors proposed two types of damage diagnosis methods with compressional and flexural waves, respectively. Moreover, those proposed methods were applied to two specific damage types, rib crack and debonding between ribs and skin. The specific damage diagnosis methods were verified experimentally to find that damages could be detected by those methods.