Analysis of loading effects on Guided Ultrasonic Waves and Damage Assessment in a full-scale CFRP fuselage structure

Structural Health Monitoring by means of Guided Ultrasonic Waves for realistic applications relies on compensation of operational and environmental effects. Besides the dominant effect of tem-perature, the loading condition of the structure affects wave propagation and needs to be consid-ered when designing a SHM system and verifying it’s damage assessment performance. Experi-mental data from a CFRP fuselage structure under different loading conditions are analyzed re-garding the loading effect on the wave propagation and subsequently the influence on damage assessment performance. For the latter purpose, the responses from barely visible impact damages are regarded under the varying loading conditions as well