A Comparative Study of Geometric Phase Change- and Sideband Peak Count-Based Techniques for Monitoring Damage Growth and Material Nonlinearity

This work presents numerical modeling-based investigations for detecting and monitoring damage growth and material nonlinearity in plate structures using topological acoustic (TA) and sideband peak count (SPC)-based sensing techniques. The nonlinear ultrasonic SPC-based technique (SPC-index or SPC-I) has shown its effectiveness in monitoring damage growth affecting various engineering materials. However, the new acoustic parameter, "geometric phase change (GPC)" and GPC-index (or GPC-I), derived from the TA sensing technique adopted for monitoring damage growth or material nonlinearity has not been reported yet. The damage growth modeling is carried out by the peri-ultrasound technique to simulate nonlinear interactions between elastic waves and damages (cracks). For damage growth with a purely linear response and for the nonlinearity arising from only the nonlinear stress-strain relationship of the material, the numerical analysis is conducted by the finite element method (FEM) in the Abaqus/CAE 2021 software. In both numerical modeling scenarios, the SPC- and GPC-based techniques are adopted to capture and compare those responses. The computed results show that, from a purely linear scattering response in FEM modeling, the GPC-I can effectively detect the existence of damage but cannot monitor damage growth since the linear scattering differences are small when crack thickness increases. The SPC-I does not show any change when a nonlinear response is not generated. However, the nonlinear response from the damage growth can be efficiently modeled by the nonlocal peri-ultrasound technique. Both the GPC-I and SPC-I techniques can clearly show the damage evolution process if the frequencies are properly chosen. This investigation also shows that the GPC-I indicator has the capability to distinguish nonlinear materials from linear materials while the SPC-I is found to be more effective in distinguishing between different types of nonlinear materials. This work can reveal the mechanism of GPC-I for capturing linear and nonlinear responses, and thus can provide guidance in structural health monitoring (SHM).