• CN: 11-2187/TH
  • ISSN: 0577-6686

Journal of Mechanical Engineering ›› 2026, Vol. 62 ›› Issue (2): 104-114.doi: 10.3901/JME.260040

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Dispersion Curve Reconstruction and Quantitative Assessment of Metal Damage Based on Ultrasonic Guided Wave Spectrum Estimation

LI Congyu, GAO Fei, LIU Lu, LI Yilin, LIN Jing   

  1. School of Reliability and Systems Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191
  • Received:2024-12-11 Revised:2025-07-03 Published:2026-03-02

Abstract: Thin-walled structures are widely used in aviation, aerospace, transportation and other fields, and their structural integrity is a prerequisite for ensuring the safety of equipment in service. Due to fatigue, impact, complex environment and other factors, thin-walled structures are prone to corrosion, cracks and other defects that are not easy to recognize. With the increasing large-scale and complexity of thin-walled structures, traditional inspection methods are usually difficult to take into account the rapidity and accuracy of inspection. To this end, a local wave number reconstruction and damage quantitative assessment method based on ultrasonic guided waves is proposed, which can take into account the detection efficiency and damage quantitative assessment, and realize the damage localization and depth assessment of thin-walled structures. Firstly, through the characterization of guided wave propagation in thin-walled structures, it reveals the correlation mechanism between guided wave dispersion characteristics and structural damage, and provides a theoretical basis for quantitative assessment of structural thickness damage. Secondly, the improved spatial spectrum estimation algorithm is established, and the guiding vector is built with wave number as the input parameter, and the guiding wave number value under local test is reconstructed by searching the orthogonal characteristics of the signal subspace and the noise subspace, so as to realize the reconstruction of the local state information of the structure. In addition, for the problem of long time and high cost of the application of wavefield processing technology based on two-dimensional Fourier transform with the damage identification of large metal plates, a damage detection strategy with sub-area and less sampling is proposed, which improves the detection efficiency and reconstruction accuracy. Finally, through finite element simulation and experimental study, the size and depth estimation of local damage is realized with an error within 5%, which verifies the effectiveness and accuracy of the method.

Key words: thin-walled construction, ultrasonic guided waves, spectral estimation, wave number reconstruction, damage identification

CLC Number: