On research of a phase synthesis time reversal focusing method for damage imaging of complex composite structures

Time reversal focusing method has been proved to be an effective method for active Lamb wave–based structural health monitoring. In this article, aiming at developing a practical method for online localization of damage on aircraft composite structures that can take advantage of time reversal focusing and do not rely on the transfer function, a phase synthesis–based time reversal focusing method was proposed. In this method, damage images are given out directly through time reversal focusing, and the other imaging processes such as the delay-and-sum imaging method adopted in many researches of time reversal focusing are not needed. Based on the damage imaging method, a structural health monitoring demonstration system was built on a composite panel of an aircraft wing box with many bolt holes and stiffeners. The demonstrated results show that this method can estimate the positions of damages efficiently with a low sensitivity of group velocity errors and a high antijamming capability.