Guided Plate Wave Potential for Damage Analysis of Composite Materials

The emergence of plate waves as a functional approach to the evaluation of thin structures, especially composite plates, has been gradual and steady. This statement may be supported by the increasing attention, in the recent publications[1,2], focussed on leaky Lamb waves in composites. The generation and the characteristics of plate wave modes, although using a quasi-local technique, has already been established and the dispersion relationships are being studied in detail, especially for isotropic cases. In practice, the critical drawbacks which have been detrimental in the widespread deployment of these methods are the complicated mode behavior and a lack of complete understanding of the mechanics involved. Thus, to fully exploit the plate waves, it is imperative that the physics of wave propagation within the thin composite structures be fully explored using experimental methods and be backed by a very strong theoretical basis in order to obtain NDE guidelines for fiber reinforced composite materials