The effect of introducing attenuation on Lamb wave dispersion curves is studied in this paper. Attenuation is introduced to a three-layered composite plate by an adhesive bond layer with viscous behavior. No changes are required to the transfer matrix formulation for the propagation of elastic waves. By introduction of a complex wavenumber, the model can be used to the propagation of attenuative Lamb waves. Numerical examples for a three-layered aluminium-epoxy-aluminium plate show that attenuation values of each mode in plates are related not only to attenuation, but also to the thickness of the bonded layer, which is in agreement with practical situations.
The study on the inverse problems in the ultrasonic nondestructive testing (NDT) has a wide application field in various industries. An error function based inversion algorithm is introduced to determine the parameters of three-layered plates from the measured velocity of multi-mode Lamb waves. A mixed-spectral estimation is proposed to combine FFT with AR model for exact determination of the ultrasonic phase velocity. Experiments are performed using two conventional angle probes as transmitter and receiver on the same surface of three-layered laminates. Inverse analyses of one parameter (thickness) and two parameters (longitudinal and transverse wave velocities in a layer, or thickness of two layers) of three-layered laminates are made. The experimental results show that the inverse approach is in good agreement with the actual value.
