Interaction of Guided Waves with Delamination in a Bilayered Aluminum-Composite Pressure Vessel

Composite structures are likely affected by barely visible or not visible damages including delaminations, disbondings or detachments among several parts connected together to obtain the whole structure. Pressure vessels adopted for space application represent a significant case. They are designed with a metal to composite hybrid configuration. The harsh and unpredictable missions may threaten the connection between different materials inducing hidden damage. Guided ultrasonic waves are investigated in this work in view of detection and assessment of small emerging flaws at the interface level. Experimental and numerical approaches are used to predict the propagation behavior of the first antisymmetric (A0) Lamb wave mode. That is complicated by the interaction with the connected area, the multimodal behavior and the interaction with damage when present. However, the work demonstrates that simplified models can be used to investigate the wave field accurately with a fewer computational effort possible. Finally, theoretical considerations and numerical outcomes are used in combination to reveal the interaction phenomena and demonstrate the detection capability of A0 mode for a possible damage index approach.