Electronic design considerations and system development for structural health monitoring with ultrasonic guided waves

The design of electronic systems for structural health monitoring (SHM) with ultrasonic guided waves (UGW) requires a dedicated electronic front-end considering the peculiarities of this application. The UGW piezoelectric transducers characteristics are first decided depending on the operating environment, the structures material and their dimensions, the definition of connections and transducers diagnostics. Another specific feature of the electronic design is for the systems operating both in passive mode for impact detection and active mode for damage detection and positioning. These two operating modes correspond to different analog electronic chains because the received signals have different amplitude levels and frequency spectrum. The paper will review the main building blocks of the electronic system with a focus on analog front-end electronic circuits.