Composite material structures are commonly used in many industrial sectors (aerospace, automotive, transportation), and can operate in harsh environments where impacts with other parts or debris may cause critical safety and functionality issues. This work presents a method for improving the accuracy of impact position determination using acoustic source triangulation schemes based on the data collected by piezoelectric sensors attached to the structure. A novel approach is used to estimate the Differential Time-of-Arrival (DToA) between the impact response signals collected by a triplet of sensors, overcoming the limitations of classical methods that rely on amplitude thresholds calibrated for a specific sensor type. An experimental evaluation of the proposed technique was performed with specially made circular piezopolymer (PVDF) sensors designed for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications, and compared with commercial piezoelectric SHM sensors of similar dimensions. Test impacts at low energies from 35 mJ to 600 mJ were generated in a laboratory by free-falling metal spheres on a 500 mm × 500 mm × 1.25 mm quasi-isotropic Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) laminate plate. From the analysis of many impact signals, the resulting localization error was improved for all types of sensors and, in particular, for the circular PVDF sensor an average error of 20.3 mm and a standard deviation of 8.9 mm was obtained.

The structural health monitoring (SHM) of critical structures is a complex task that involves the use of different sensors that are also aimed at the identification of the location of the impact point using ultrasonic sensors. For the evaluation of the impact position, reference is often made to the well-known triangulation method. This method requires the estimation of the differential time of arrival (DToA) and the group velocity of the Lamb waves propagating into a plate-like structure: the uncertainty of these two parameters is taken into consideration as main cause of localization error. The work proposes a simple laboratory procedure based on a set-up with a pair of sensors that are symmetrically placed with respect to the impact point, to estimate the uncertainty of the DToA and the propagation velocity estimates. According to a theoretical analysis of the error for the impact position, the experimental uncertainties of DToA and the propagation velocity are used to estimate the overall limit of the SHM system for the impact positioning. Because the error for the DToA estimate depends also on the adopted signal processing, three common methods are selected and compared: the threshold, the correlation method, and a likelihood algorithm. Finally, the analysis of the positioning error using multisensory configuration is reported as useful for the design of the SHM system.