Ultrasonic Guided Wave Transducers and Electronic System Design for Structural Health Monitoring

The design of electronic systems for ultrasonic guided wave structural health monitoring requires a dedicated electronic front-end considering the peculiarities of this application field. The characteristics of ultrasonic guided wave piezoelectric transducers are first decided based on the operating environment, the material of the structures and their dimensions, as well as the definition of connections and diagnostics of the transducers. Another specific feature of electronic design is for systems operating both in passive mode for impact detection and in 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 and propose a new modular architecture for the electronics to address different SHM scenarios.