Structural health monitoring (SHM) based on guided waves allows assessing the health of a structure due to the sensitivity to the occurrence of delamination. However, wave propagation presents several complexities for effective damage identification in composite structures. An efficient implementation of a guided wave-based SHM system requires an accurate analysis of collected data to obtain a useful detection. This paper is concerned with the identification of small emerging delaminations in composite structural components using a sparse array of surface ultrasonic transducers. An ultrasonic-guided wave tomography technique focused on impact damage detection in composite plate-like structures is presented. A statistical damage index approach is adopted to interpret the recorded signals, and a subsequent graphic interpolation is implemented to reconstruct the damage appearance. Experimental tests carried out on a typical composite structure demonstrated the effectiveness of the developed technique with the aim to investigate the presence and location of damage using simple imaging reports and a limited number of measurements. A traditional ultrasonic inspection (C-scan) is used to assess the methodology.

In many industrial sectors, structural health monitoring (SHM) is considered as an addition to nondestructive testing (NDT) that can reduce maintenance effort during the lifetime of a technical facility, structural component, or vehicle. A large number of SHM methods are based on ultrasonic waves, whose properties change depending on structural health. However, the wide application of SHM systems is limited due to the lack of suitable methods to assess their reliability. The evaluation of the system performance usually refers to the determination of the probability of detection (POD) of a test procedure. Up until now, only a few limited methods exist to evaluate the POD of SHM systems, which prevents them from being standardized and widely accepted in the industry. The biggest hurdle concerning the POD calculation is the large number of samples needed. A POD analysis requires data from numerous identical structures with integrated SHM systems. Each structure is then damaged at different locations and with various degrees of severity. All of these are connected to high costs. Therefore, one possible way to tackle this problem is to perform computer-aided investigations. In this work, the POD assessment procedure established in NDT according to the Berens model is adapted to guided wave-based SHM systems. The approach implemented here is based on solely computer-aided investigations. After efficient modeling of wave propagation phenomena across an automotive component made of a carbon-fiber-reinforced composite, the POD curves are extracted. Finally, the novel concept of a POD map is introduced to look into the effect of damage position on system reliability.