Elastic wave phased array for damage localisation

In this paper, a problem of piezoelectric transducers used for damage localisation in an aluminium plate is investigated. Waves propagate in a specimen and reflect from boundaries and from discontinuities. Because damage reflected signals very often have a low amplitude, a phased array concept is utilized to amplify the signal. The amplification is based on the wave interference phenomenon. The star configuration consists of four linear phased arrays. As a result, a damage map is created combining four outputs of linear phased arrays. Several configurations with a varying number of transducers are investigated. The resulting damage maps are compared so as to balance the number of transducers and the possibility of flaw localisation using these maps. The presented investigation has only a numerical character.