Dispersion compensation in Lamb wave defect detection with step-pulse excitation and warped frequency transform

The damage localization accuracy of a Lamb wave detection method is greatly influenced by the multi-mode character and the dispersion effect of Lamb waves. Warped frequency transform (WFT) with a warping function derived from the frequency-dependent phase velocity can be used to suppress the dispersion. Step-pulse excitation is adopted in this paper and the transfer function of the propagation path is extracted from the step-pulse response. WFT is then used to compensate the transfer function, and the compensation of the narrowband signal is realized by convolution of the ideal narrowband burst signal with the compensated transfer function. Considering that wavenumber is a key parameter in designing the warping function for compensation, we presented a method in this paper to calculate the wavenumber directly from the measured signal. This method uses the phase response to estimate the curve of wavenumber. The WFT method is then combined with the delay-and-sum Lamb wave imaging method to improve the imaging resolution. A comparison with traditional delay-and-sum method and time-reversal method verifies the effect of this method in improving the damage localization results. It is shown that the proposed method leverages dispersion to enable good performance in the presence of multiple modes.