Simulation of Lamb Wave Propagation in Composite Structures Based on the Finite Element Stacked Shell Method

Monitoring of structural integrity of a component is very important, especially for the damage sensitive laminated composite structures. Among the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) techniques, the Acousto-Ultrasonic (AU) technology is very promising. However, the accurate simulation of Lamb wave propagation is a very demanding task, in terms of computational cost. In the present study, in the frame of Finite Element method, the stacked-shell methodology is proposed for the simulation of Lamb wave propagation in composite laminated panels. The results of the stacked-shell approach are initially evaluated with respect to experimental results; the method is subsequently applied to undamaged and damaged composite laminated panels, in order to assess its efficiency and accuracy in the simulation of Lamb wave-based damage detection techniques.