Damage detection in thick steel beam using lamb waves

Different from the mostly concerned Lamb wave-based damage detection for thin plates, this paper presents a diagnosis procedure on thick steel beams with thickness of 34 mm. The diagnosis strategy and specimens were first described, and some parameters, such as the frequency and the number of cycles of the diagnostic waveform, were discussed. Based on finite element method (FEM) simulation, the experiment configuration was addressed, results from which show good similarity between the outcomes from the simulations and those from the experiments. Wavelet transform was further used to process the acquired Lamb wave signals for the purpose of damage detection and localization. Meanwhile, the velocity of the Lamb waves was calculated, illustrating that the fundamental anti-symmetric (A₀) Lamb wave mode was excited in this case. The results demonstrate that Lamb waves can also be applied to some thick structures for the purpose of structural health monitoring.