Abstract
This paper presents a nonlinear imaging method based on nonlinear elastic guided waves, for the damage detection and localisation in a composite laminate. The proposed technique relies on the study of the structural nonlinear responses by means of a combination of second order phase symmetry analysis (PSA) with chirp excitation and inverse filtering (IF) method. PSA was used to exploit the invariant properties of the propagating elastic waves with the phase angle of the pulse compressed chirp signals, in order to characterise the second order nonlinear behaviour of the medium. Then, the IF approach was applied to a library of second order nonlinear responses to obtain a two-dimensional image of the damage. The experimental tests carried out on an impact damage composite sample were compared to standard C-scan. The results showed that the present technique allowed achieving the optimal focalisation of the nonlinear source in the spatial and time domain, by taking advantage of multiple scattering and a small number of receiver sensors.