Damage Imaging in Lamb Wave-Based Inspection of Adhesive Joints

Adhesive bonding has become increasingly important in many industries. Non-destructive inspection of adhesive joints is essential for the condition assessment and maintenance of a structure containing such joints. The aim of this paper was the experimental investigation of the damage identification of a single lap adhesive joint of metal plate-like structures. Nine joints with different defects in the form of partial debonding were considered. The inspection was based on ultrasonic guided wave propagation. The Lamb waves were excited at one point of the analyzed specimen by means of a piezoelectric actuator, while the guided wave field was measured with the use of a laser vibrometer. For damage imaging, the recorded out-of-plane vibrations were processed by means of the weighted root mean square (WRMS). The influence of different WRMS parameters (i.e., the time window and weighting factor), as well as excitation frequencies, were analyzed using statistical analysis. The results showed that two-dimensional representations of WRMS values allowed for the identification of the presence of actual defects in the adhesive film and determined their geometry