Piezo-composite patches applied to the detection of defects using lamb wave focusing

Ultrasonic-based SHM (Structural Health Monitoring) applications usually rely on the use of piezo-electric patches to emit and receive ultrasonic surface acoustic waves. The principle is to study the propagation of the waves through a structure to assess its health. Because of the elevated number of echoes and possible modes of propagation of the acoustic waves within the structure, those applications suffer from a burden of signal processing. This paper presents a composite piezo-electric patch and its electronics that were designed and successfully tested for reducing the complexity of the SHM detection schemes.