LAUSR

Guided waves have been extensively studied and widely used for structural health monitoring because of their large volumetric coverage and good sensitivity to defects. Effectively and preferentially exciting a desired wave mode having good sensitivity to a certain defect is of great practical importance. Piezoelectric discs and plates are the most common types of surface-mounted transducers for guided wave excitation and reception. Their geometry strongly influences the proportioning between excited modes as well as the total power of the excited modes. It is highly desirable to predominantly excite the selected mode while the total transduction power is maximized. In this work, a fully coupled multi-physics finite element analysis, which incorporates the driving circuit, the piezoelectric element and the wave guide, is combined with the normal mode expansion method to study both the mode tuning and total wave power. The excitation of circular crested waves in an aluminum plate with circular piezoelectric discs is numerically studied for different disc and adhesive thicknesses. Additionally, the excitation of plane waves in an aluminum plate, using a stripe piezoelectric element is studied both numerically and experimentally. It is difficult to achieve predominant single mode excitation as well as maximum power transmission simultaneously, especially for higher order modes. However, guidelines for designing the geometry of piezoelectric elements for optimal mode excitation are recommended.