Evaluating Structural Details' Influence on Elastic Wave Propagation for Composite Structures via Ray Tracing

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Mechanical Engineering
• Computational Mechanics

Background:

• Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) relies on analyzing wave propagation in composite materials.
• Traditional methods like the Finite Element Method (FEM) face computational limitations for complex analyses.
• Efficient wave propagation analysis is crucial for effective SHM applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel ray tracing method for analyzing wave propagation in composites.
• To demonstrate the computational efficiency of ray tracing compared to FEM.
• To validate the ray tracing method for SHM applications, including damage detection.

Main Methods:

• Development of a ray tracing model for wave propagation analysis.
• Evaluation of the model using example cases with structural features (thickness changes, stringers).
• Simulation of damage scenarios to assess the method's sensitivity.

Main Results:

• The ray tracing method shows significant advantages in computational resource utilization.
• The method accurately analyzes wave propagation around structural details and simulated damage.
• Ray tracing proves to be a valuable tool for SHM under various conditions.

Conclusions:

• Ray tracing offers an efficient and simple approach for calculating wave propagation in composites for SHM.
• The developed model can be integrated into a complete SHM framework.
• This method can be used to identify damage indicators or train artificial intelligence models for SHM.