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Ultrasonic Guided-Waves Sensors and Integrated Structural Health Monitoring Systems for Impact Detection and Localization: A Review

This version is not peer-reviewed.

Submitted:

11 March 2021

Posted:

12 March 2021

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Abstract
In the last decade the research concerning Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems have continuously investigated toward autonomous systems based on sensor networks. The different functional blocks of these systems are described introducing first the basic concepts for the impact detection applications based on piezoelectric sensors for ultrasonic guided Lamb waves generated into planar structures. Then the paper will review the recent progresses of the research with focus on the integration of sensors with the electronic interface, including the embedding of sensors with the structure that is represented by the smart-skin concept. The latter benefits of the advancement in piezoelectric MEMS sensors with small footprint mounted on flexible substrates. This new layout of sensors is essential for the system design based on a network of sensors nodes with real time signal acquisition capability for impact event capture. The options of a wired or wireless sensors network are also discussed for different dimensions of the monitored structure. The multifunctional sensors capability is also a new feature discussed in the paper for sensing the environmental conditions that affect the Lamb wave signals interpretation. The power supply by environmental energy of an autonomous sensor node is another research field where large innovation is occurred and a review of energy harvesting devices is reported. The embedded signal processing capabilities in a node with IoT based wireless sensors networks, is an important fertilization between different disciplines and examples of SHM system tested in real-life application are discussed. Finally, the large capacity of data transfer of sensors networks toward large storage data archives also with low power WiFi protocols is the new frontier for exploring artificial intelligence and machine learning applied to big data and the recent research outcomes for impact detection and characterization in complex structures are reported.
Keywords: 
structural health monitoring (SHM); acoustic emission, guided waves, Lamb waves, sensors, ultrasound, piezoelectric, composites, piezopolymers, PVDF, interdigital transducer (IDT), PWAS, C-MUT, CMUT, mems, analog electronic front end; analog signal processing, impact localization, impact detection, sensor node, wireless sensor networks (WSN), IoT, aerospace, automotive, infrastructure, condition monitoring.
Subject: 
Engineering  -   Automotive Engineering
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.

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