Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

www.elsevier.com/locate/compstruct

A quantitative identication approach for delamination in

laminated composite beams using digital damage ngerprints (DDFs)
Nan Pan a, Zhongqing Su
a

a,b

, Lin Ye

a,*

, Li-Min Zhou b, Ye Lu

Laboratory of Smart Materials and Structures (LSMS), Centre for Advanced Materials Technology (CAMT), School of Aerospace,
Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China
Available online 5 June 2006

Abstract
Digital damage ngerprints (DDFs) are a set of optimised and digitised characteristics of structural signatures, which are able to
exactly and uniquely dene a certain kind of structural healthy status. The DDF-based damage recognition technique includes the extraction of DDFs, assembly of damage parameters database (DPD) and subsequently inverse recognition in virtue of articial intelligence. In
this study, DDFs extracted from Lamb wave signals were employed to quantitatively assess delamination in carbon bre-reinforced laminated beams. Characteristics of Lamb wave signals in the laminated beams were rst evaluated, and DPD hosting DDFs for selected
damage scenarios was constructed through numerical simulations, which was used to predict delamination in the composite beams with
the aid of an articial neural algorithm. The diagnostic results have demonstrated the excellent performance of DDF technique for quantitative damage identication.
 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Composite beam; Delamination; Damage identication; FEM; Articial neural network

1. Introduction
As a signal processing and pattern recognition technique,
the concept of digital damage ngerprints (DDFs), was initially developed for identifying damage in a structure, by
calibrating the alteration in spectrographic characteristics
of elastic disturbance [1]. The DDF approach is able to link
the symptoms of a damaged structure to the damage parameters, e.g., position and size, through which the appearance
of structural damage can be predicted so as to further assess
integrity of the structure. As a generic method, the DDFbased identication can be used for general damage diagnostics and prognostics, and its eectiveness has been demonstrated by a certain number of studies [24].
In this study, such a technique was customised for
evaluating delamination in carbon bre-reinforced com-

Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 9351 4798; fax: +61 2 9351 3760.
E-mail address: ye@aeromech.usyd.edu.au (L. Ye).

0263-8223/$ - see front matter  2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.compstruct.2006.04.078

posite beams. Lamb wave, a kind of guided wave existing

in thin plate, was excited to serve as the elastic disturbance in the laminate. And the appearance of delamination can lead to the alteration in energy spectrum of
Lamb wave propagation. Lamb waves possess excellent
propagation capability in composite materials and high
sensitivity to the local damage or property change in the
structure, and their applications for structural damage
evaluation can be widely found [59]. Dynamic FEM simulations were employed to obtain the energy spectra of
Lamb waves under randomly selected damage scenarios,
from which DDFs were extracted and used to construct
a damage parameters database (DPD). A multilayer feedforward articial neural network (ANN) was designed
and trained using the DPD with an error-backpropagation (BP) algorithm, to predict the concerned damage
parameters. Eectiveness of the proposed methodology
was then examined by blind tests using other simulated
delamination in the CF/EP (T650/F584) quasi-isotropic
laminated beams.

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N. Pan et al. / Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

2. Digital damage ngerprints (DDFs)

As an inverse problem, quantitative damage identication can only be eectively fullled through appropriate
inverse algorithms, particularly for those complex cases.
It is the recent introduction of bionics that has provided
an encouraging solution to this concern. Inspirited by biomimetic principia, a signal processing and pattern recognition engine was developed [1], originated from the
observation that spectrographic characteristics of damage-scattered elastic wave in the timefrequency domain
are quantitatively sensitive to the damage location and
geometry than any other structural modal, temporal or static characteristics. The engine presumes that any possible
damage in a structure presents unique alteration in the
energy spectrum of elastic wave propagation. Such an
approach, serving as the prototype of DDF technique, consists of two major steps, signal processing and inverse pattern recognition.
2.1. Signal processing
In this step, signal ltration, data compression and
DDF extraction are in order performed.
Acquired from sensing devices attached on a host structure under surveillance, a raw signal contains substantial
information for damage recognition as well as various noisy
components in a wide range of frequencies. For purication, the time-dependent raw signal is preliminarily applied
with a series of digital bandpass lters built in terms of
orthogonal discrete wavelet transform (DWT) [10,11]. Components pertaining to the active excitation frequency can
thus be isolated by screening other irrelevant signal elements. A continuous wavelet transform (CWT)-based spectrographic analysis is subsequently applied on the ltered
signal [10,11], to get its energy distribution in the time-scale
domain (scale is proportional to the reciprocal of frequency). In the approach, it is stipulated that the point in
the de-noised energy spectrum, whose absolute magnitude
of amplitude is simultaneously larger or smaller than those
of its contiguous time and frequency points in anteriority
and in posteriority, is the characteristic point, and its corresponding amplitude is characteristic amplitude. Both of
them are principal components for the signal, while the other
components in the signal are non-characteristic components. A feature vectors pair, {time, frequency, amplitude},
is accordingly created to accommodate these extracted principal components.
In practices where a certain number of sensing devices
are normally networked to cover a large area of the concerned structure, the above operation is likewise extended
to each acquired signal from the network. All these feature
vectors pairs are arranged in accordance with the orthogonal arrays theory [1], referred to as digital damage ngerprints (DDFs), to be associated with a particular damage
case or healthy status. For understanding, DDF can be
considered as digitalised structural symptoms, and accord-

ingly one particular damage can be exclusively dened with

one set of DDFs. Provided that dierent types of damage
are personated as crimes to the structure, DDFs are then
the exclusive record for each crime. Topologising such a
method for dierent damage statuses, a damage parameters
database (DPD) containing all feature vectors pairs is consequently constructed for the concerned structure.
2.2. Pattern recognition
A properly established mutual relation between DDFs
in DPD and corresponding damage parameters is able to
inversely identify the damage. DPD serves as a knowledge-based data library, to be linked with dierent damage
parameters under an articial neural network (ANN).
Owning capabilities in learning, ratiocination, adaptability
and robustness, an ANN operates as a parallel computational model to seek for a non-linear mapping using a series
of inputs and corresponding outputs [12]. DDFs, hosted in
the DPD, is utilised as training data for the ANN. To predict an unknown structural damage, actual in-eld signals
are likewise processed and their DDFs are extracted following the approach mentioned above, and feeding these
DDFs into the well-trained ANN leads to the ratiocination
of damage parameters.
3. Delamination in composite laminates
Laminated composite structures are highly susceptible
to low-velocity impact, resulting in invisible damage, manifesting itself as bre breakage, matrix cracking or local
delamination [13]. In particular, delamination, appearing
as the debonding of adjoining plies, is the most hazardous
defect for laminated composites, which could be induced
during careless manufacture or a consequence of accidental
impact. The occurrence of delamination considerably lowers structural strength, stiness and severely reduces structural integrity. Focusing on the delamination in carbon
bre-reinforced composite laminates, both theoretical studies [14,15] and numerical simulation [16,17] have been well
developed, where one- or two-dimensional assumptions on
delamination were normally applied during modelling.
While aimed at a higher simulation precision, a threedimensional full-scale FEM modelling technique was
herein developed.
3.1. Model of delaminated beam
An 8-ply [45/45/0/90]s quasi-isotropic carbon brereinforced composite cantilever beam, shaped at 400 mm
20 mm 1.275 mm, was considered and schematically
shown in Fig. 1. Without losing the generality, a
through-width delamination was supposed to exist between
the third and fourth laminae (counting downwards from
the upper beam surface) with axis-span L, interlaminar
position d, and distance a from its right tip to the right
beam end. In the delaminated region, a volume-split was

N. Pan et al. / Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

561

Fig. 1. Structural model of composite beam containing delamination.

formed by separating two delamination surfaces with the

distance of half thickness of an individual lamina, as illustrated in Fig. 2. For exactly simulating the wave propagation, the model was nely meshed using 8-note 3-D brick
elements, with eight layers of elements in the beam thickness corresponding to eight laminae. At least 10 elemental
nodes were allocated within the Lamb wave wavelength
(around 1 mm 1 mm in xy plane for each element, meeting a ratio of 10:1 for element length to the width and to
the thickness), to guarantee the validity of the simulated
dynamic responses. Such a mesh density leads to approxi-

mately 70,000 elements in total for the delaminated

beam.
A surface contact algorithm [18] was introduced to process the contact problem arising from delamination, primarily relaxing restrictions on two contactable surfaces.
The contact algorithm permits a small relative sliding displacement and arbitrary rotation of two delaminated surfaces. Both the upper and lower delamination surfaces
were dened using an element-based deformable surface
[18], allowing the interaction between two surfaces in the
normal direction, but resisting mutual penetration.

FEM nodes

Delamination
(a)

Point A

Stress
Forced oscillation applied on right beam end

(b)
Fig. 2. FEM model of composite beam: (a) delamination prole view; (b) schematics of Lamb wave generation and acquisition.

N. Pan et al. / Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

For individual lamina, the elastic properties were

derived by considering both the bre and matrix, in accordance with a three-dimensional bre/matrix model [19]. In
the model
E11 Xf Ef11 Xm Em ;
Em

;
E22 E33
p
Em
1  Xf 1 
Ef22
Gm

;
G12 G13
p
Gm
1  Xf 1 
Gf12
Gm

;
G23
p
Gm
1  Xf 1 
Gf23
m23

0.5

0.0

-0.5

-1.0
5.0x10-6

0.0

(a)

E22
1
2G23

1.0x10-5

1.5x10-5

Time [Second]

where subscripts f and m denote bre and matrix, respectively. X, G, E and m are volume percentage, shear modulus,
Youngs modulus and Poissons ratio, respectively. Subscript 11 is the bre direction. Assuming there are no voids
in the composite materials, the density of lamina is then dened as
q Xf  qf Xm  qm

CF/EP (T650/F584) [Hexcel Co., 2001] was chosen in the

analysis, whose elastic properties for individual bre and
matrix are detailed in Table 1(a). Eective elastic properties
for single unidirectional lamina were determined using Eqs.
(1) and (2) and summarised in Table 1(b).

Power amplitude

m12 m13 Xf mf12 Xm mm ;

1.0

Normalised amplitude

562

0
0.0

(b)

5.0x105

1.0x106

1.5x106

2.0x106

2.5x106

3.0x106

Frequency (Hz)

Fig. 3. Generated diagnostic Lamb wave in the (a) time and (b) frequency
domains.

3.2. Model of Lamb wave excitation and acquisition

Lamb wave was numerically generated in the delaminated beam. A previous study [20] has veried that the
Lamb wave with a waveform of 5-cycle sinusoid tonebursts
windowed by the Hanning function can benet the signal
identication, which eectively prevents wave dispersing
while makes the signal interpretation explicit. Modulated
with such a waveform and assuming that the excitation
source was located at the left free end of the beam, Lamb
wave was activated at a central frequency of 0.5 MHz, by
evenly applying a horizontal displacement on all the nodes
Table 1
Properties of laminated composite beam for FEM simulation
(a) Technical parameters of CF/EP (T650/F584) composites

in the thickness at the left beam end, as illustrated in Fig. 2.

The generated Lamb wave is exhibited in Fig. 3 with its frequency spectrum via fast Fourier transform (FFT), where
majority of the energy is observed to centralise around
0.5 MHz.
Generated Lamb wave propagated along the beam axis
from the left end, and the wave was simultaneously monitored at the point A at a sample rate of 20.48 MHz,
100 mm away from the left beam end, highlighted in
Fig. 2. At the point, stresses (S11 and S22) for all neighbouring elements around point A in the top layer of the beam
were averaged.
3.3. Dynamic simulation and DDF extraction

Fibre
product
name

Matrix
product
name

Fibre
volume
[%]

Matrix
volume
[%]

Laminate
density
[kg/m3]

T650/35-12K

F584

56

44

1528

(b) Estimated elastic properties for individual lamina

E11
[GPa]

E22
[GPa]

E33
[GPa]

G12
[GPa]

G13
[GPa]

G23
[GPa]

m12

153.67

9.49

9.49

4.26

4.26

3.44

0.295

0.295

13

m23
0.381

With a time step for dynamic calculation less than the

ratio of the minimum distance of any two adjoining nodes
to the maximum Lamb wave velocity in the excitation frequency range, the dynamic simulation was conducted using
ABAQUS/EXPLICIT on a SUN Blade 1000 workstation (dual processors at 900 MHz and 2G RAM).
Captured Lamb wave signals were processed following
the DDF extraction principia aforementioned. As typical

N. Pan et al. / Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

results, the raw Lamb wave signals acquired at point A, for

delamination-free beam (benchmark), and two arbitrarily
chosen damage cases (L = 25 mm, a = 120 mm, between
the rst and second laminae; and L = 20 mm, a = 80 mm,
between the third and fourth laminae, respectively), are displayed in Figs. 46 for comparison. While the DWT-ltered wave components in the range of active excitation
(0.5 MHz), wave energy spectrum, spectrum contour and
nally extracted DDFs for two selected damage cases are
also collated in Figs. 5 and 6. In all raw signals, two major
wave peaks are observed, i.e., the incident Lamb wave
propagating from the excitation source and the reected
wave from the right beam end. Compared with the benchmark signal in Fig. 4(b), extra components can be phenomenally observed between two major peaks, in Figs. 5(b), (c)
and 6(b), (c), which are recognised as the delaminationscattered wave and energy components.
Also evidently, the acquired Lamb waves are more prone
to contamination by ambient vibrational noise and, particularly, multiple Lamb modes. And it was observed that

Benchmark

Normalised stress

0.50

0.00
-0.25
-0.50

-1.00
0

500

1000

(a)

1500

2000

2500

3000

Sampling points
0.15

Benchmark

0.10

Normalised stress

4. DDF-based delamination identication

4.1. DPD construction

10 mm 6 L 6 40 mm
0.25

-0.75

0.05

0.00

-0.05

-0.10

-0.15

(b)

both excitation frequency and beam thickness can signicantly inuence the propagation characteristics [21]. At
the present excitation frequency of 0.5 MHz (below dispersion cuto frequency [5]), only basic symmetric and
anti-symmetric modes (S0 and A0), as well as fundamental
horizontal shear mode (SH0) exist, with propagation velocities of approximately 5800 m/s, 1800 m/s and 4000 m/s,
respectively. Given the distance between the excitation
source and sensing location, only the incident S0 mode
and damage-induced S0 and SH0 mode (not the originally
excited ones), as well as the reected S0 waves from boundaries, can be detected, while other modes cannot be captured in the current sampling period due to their relatively
slow velocities. Based on DDF principia, characteristics of
damage-scattered wave are uniquely associated with various damage parameters.

FEM models for the composite beams bearing various

delaminations were repeatedly created with dierent damage scenarios, where two delamination parameters, L and
a, varied arbitrarily but limited by, considering the reality,

1.00
0.75

1500

563

1750

2000

and

75 6 a 6 180

while delamination was permitted to exist between any two

adjacent laminae. The selection of delamination parameters, in Eq. (3), is to be discussed in later section.
Up to 45 delamination cases were individually modelled
for building the DPD. During the DPD development, the
principal components for the incident wave and reected
wave from the right beam end in each signal were not
included since they almost kept constant (independent of
change in delamination parameters), aimed at reducing the
DPD size. Only the principal components between them
were considered, which are signicantly subjected to such
changes. For each delamination scenario, Lamb wave signals were numerically captured and their DDFs were
extracted. Each set of DDFs for one delamination case consists of 50 characteristic time points, 50 characteristic frequency points and their corresponding characteristic
amplitudes, while such an amount was later proved enough
to oer satisfactory identication precision. All of the DDFs
were accommodated in the DPD. Meanwhile, a concomitant
target vector was established for each delamination case with
three damage indices (L, a and d), and 45 in total. For optimisation of DPD, delamination size, L, and location, a, were
normalised by their possible extrema, 40 mm and 180 mm,
respectively, while interlaminar position, d, can be 0.1,
0.2, . . . , 0.7 only considering its actual physical meaning.
4.2. ANN training and damage assessment

Sampling points

Fig. 4. (a) Raw signal of delamination-free beam (benchmark) and (b)

corresponding DWT-ltered component.

A feedforward articial neural network was designed, in

which the DDFs stored in the DPD and the target vector

564

N. Pan et al. / Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

Fig. 5. (a) Raw signal of delaminated beam (L = 25 mm, a = 120 mm and between the rst and second laminae); (b) corresponding DWT-ltered
component; (c) CWT-based spectrographic analysis; (d) energy spectrum contour plot and (e) extracted DDF.

for 45 delamination cases were used as the training input

and target, respectively. Two hidden processing neural layers were allocated, containing of 20 and 8 neurons, determined by an empirical formula [22]

p
mnA

where i, m and n denote the numbers of neuron under consideration, input elements and output targets, respectively.

N. Pan et al. / Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

565

Fig. 6. (a) Raw signal of delaminated beam (L = 20 mm, a = 80 mm and between the third and fourth laminae); (b) corresponding DWT-ltered
component; (c) CWT-based spectrographic analysis; (d) energy spectrum contour plot and (e) extracted DDF.

A is an empirical constant, commonly ranging from 4 to 8

depending on an actual system.

Two sigmoid transfer functions [12] were used to connect the input layer with the rst processing layer, and to

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N. Pan et al. / Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

connect two processing layers, respectively, while a linear

transfer function linked the second neural layer with the
output. The convergence precision, mean square error
(MSE) (MSE = 1010) between the expected target and real
output vectors [12], was introduced to real-time calibrate
the network performances. The ANN training was conducted using a scaled conjugate gradient (SCG)-supervised
error-backpropagation (BP) learning algorithm [12], on a
PC platform (Pentium IV 2.0GHZ, 1GRAM). And the
training progress, reected by the MSE versus the training
iteration, is recorded in Fig. 7, where it converged after
approximately 3000 iterations.
For validation, such a methodology was evaluated by
blind tests, where another three delamination cases (referring to Table 2) that are distinct from any of those 45 cases
used for DPD development, were modelled using the same
simulation technique. The Lamb wave propagation in these
beams was numerically analysed and DDFs for each of

Fig. 7. Progress of ANN training.

them were extracted following the DDF extraction principia, which were then fed into the trained ANN for diagnosis. The quantitative identication results on three
damage parameters in blind tests are summarised in Table
3, compared with the actual values.
5. Results and discussion
From Table 3, excellent prediction for three selected
blind tests was obtained, particularly for delamination
location and size (L and a), while large errors occur for predicting the interlaminar position (d).
5.1. DDF amount
For further investigation, the ANN with same congurations was re-trained using the DDFs of 80%, 60% and
40% (randomly selected) of total 45 delamination cases,
respectively, and the results consequently predicted for
two major delamination parameters, L and a, are compared in Table 4. It is apparent that the prediction made
by ANN becomes more accurate with the increase in
DDF amount, viz. more delamination cases for ANN
training. However, compared with the results from utility
of full set of 45 delamination cases, no signicant impairment on the accuracy is noticed for those originated from
80% of delamination cases for the ANN training. It indicates that the training can reach the saturation when training data increase over a certain level. A slight improvement
on prediction accuracy may be at the abundant cost of
computational consumption. At normal, a compromise
between the expected prediction accuracy and aordable
computational cost should be considered.
In addition, it is noteworthy that the predicted results
do not superpose any damage pattern used for the ANN
training, simply implying that the results are obtained
from deduction, rather than just nding the best tting
patterns from those delamination cases for DPD construction. More discussion about the dependence of prediction

Table 2
Congurations of delaminated composite beams for validation
Geometric dimension [mm]

400 20 1.275
400 20 1.275
400 20 1.275

1
2#
3#
a

Delamination parameters
[mm]
L

da

19
17
25

126
93
80

0.1
0.1
0.7

1
2#
3#

DDF Amount

Real value [mm]

Predicted value [mm] (error [abs%])

19
17
25

126
93
80

0.1
0.1
0.7

20.15 (6.1)
16.16 (4.9)
26.1 (4.4)

125.1 (0.7)
89.51 (3.8)
82.2 (2.8)

0.217  0.2
0.19  0.2
0.56  0.6

Predicted value [mm] (error [abs%])

L

100%

1
2#
3#

20.15 (6.1)
16.16 (4.9)
26.1 (4.4)

125.1 (0.7)
89.51 (3.8)
82.2 (2.8)

80%

1#
2#
3#

17.33 (8.8)
18.48 (8.7)
26.48 (5.9)

122 (3.2)
87.14 (6.3)
75.36 (5.8)

60%

1#
2#
3#

21.32 (12.2)
18.62 (9.5)
22.33 (10.7)

138.1 (9.6)
103.70 (11.5)
87.52 (9.4)

40%

1#
2#
3#

22.27 (17.2)
20.4 (20.0)
29.63 (18.5)

98.78 (21.6)
110.58 (18.9)
98.48 (23.1)

0.1 denotes the delamination between the rst and second laminae.

Table 3
Prediction from ANN using full set of delamination cases for training

Table 4
Eects of DDF amount on prediction precision

N. Pan et al. / Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

accuracy on ANN congurations can be referred to elsewhere [23].

5.2. Delamination location
By increasing and decreasing the distance between
delamination and the right beam end, a, to 180 mm and
50 mm, respectively, while maintaining the delamination
size and interlaminar position (L = 25 mm and d = 0.1),
the accordingly DWT-ltered wave signals in the excitation
frequency band (0.5 MHz) are displayed in Fig. 8, where
the delamination-induced extra signal characteristics are
overwhelmed by the incident wave (rst wave sensed at
Point A) and the reected wave from right beam end,
respectively for two cases. Additionally, for the case of
180 mm, multiple reections from both delamination edges
and beam ends complicate the signal appearance. Under
such a circumstance, extracted DDFs may be unable to
oer an exact description on the damage. With the current

beam geometric features and Lamb wave propagation

velocities, the explicit detectable scope for delamination is
around 60175 mm away from the right beam end, for
which the detection accuracy can be guaranteed. An elongated detectable range can be achieved by narrowing the
bandwidth of diagnostic wave (currently 5-cycle tonebursts
at a central frequency of 0.5 MHz), i.e., increasing the central frequency (but below the non-dispersion cuto threshold for the selected Lamb mode).
5.3. Delamination size
By increasing and decreasing the delamination size, L, to
40 mm and 10 mm, respectively, while maintaining the
delamination location and interlaminar position (a =
80 mm and d = 0.1), the accordingly DWT-ltered signals
in the excitation frequency band are collated in Fig. 9.
Compared with the signals for the relatively large delamination case in Fig. 9(a) and for the delamination-free case
0.15

0.15

Normalised stress

Normalised stress

0.05

0.00

-0.05

800

1000

(a)

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

2200

-0.05

1200

1400

(a)

Sampling points

1600

1800

2000

2200

2400

2000

2200

2400

Sampling points
0.15

0.10

L=10mm

0.10

a=50mm

Normalised stress

Normalised stress

0.00

-0.15
1000

2400

0.15

0.05

0.00

-0.05

0.05

0.00

-0.05

-0.10

-0.10

(b)

0.05

-0.10

-0.10

-0.15
600

L=40mm

0.10

a=180mm

0.10

-0.15
600

567

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

2200

-0.15
1000

2400

Sampling points

Fig. 8. DWT-ltered Lamb wave signals for composite beams containing

delamination (a) 180 mm and (b) 50 mm away from the right beam end.

(b)

1200

1400

1600

1800

Sampling points

Fig. 9. DWT-ltered Lamb wave signals for composite beams containing

delamination of (a) 40 mm and (b) 10 mm.

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N. Pan et al. / Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

in Fig. 4, only a tiny change can be quantitatively calibrated from the signals for the case with delamination of
10 mm in Fig. 9(b), indicating that too small structural
damage may not phenomenally inuence the Lamb wave
propagation. As a result, the detectable size of delamination should be no less than 10 mm for the discussed beam.
Meanwhile, for a very large delamination, e.g., the one
with a size over 40 mm, the wave component reected from
the delamination left tip can be overlapped with the one
reected from right tip, confusing signal identication.
Under both circumstances, such an approach may lose
the eectiveness.
5.4. Interlaminar position
By changing the interlaminar position of delamination,
while maintaining the delamination location and size
(L = 25 mm and a = 80 mm), the DWT-ltered signals
for some typical cases, between rst and second, second
and third, third and fourth, as well as seventh and eighth,
in the excitation frequency band are compared in Fig. 10.
In the gure, no essential dierence can be found among
the processed signals regardless of the interlaminar position. The observation hints that Lamb wave might not be
very sensitive to the change of delamination interlaminar
position for the current case study, which can also be

responsible for the fact that the large error usually occurs
for predicting the interlaminar position of delamination
in above blind tests. However, this issue is less signicant
in the reality considering the reality that delamination
due to low-velocity impact can normally lead to a series
of delamination through the thickness of composite
laminates.
5.5. Location of sensing point
By increasing and decreasing the distance between Lamb
wave acquisition place, point A, and excitation source (the
left end of the beam), to 200 mm and 50 mm, respectively,
while keeping the same delamination (L = 25 mm, a =
80 mm and d = 0.1), the DWT-ltered signals in the excitation frequency band are displayed in Fig. 11. Similar with
the concern discussed in Section 5.2, the delaminationinduced extra signal characteristics are dominated by the
reected wave from the right beam end for the case of
50 mm (far away from delamination to be detected), while
they are interfered with by the incipient wave for the case
of 200 mm (close to delamination to be detected). Considering the beam length in the present study and Lamb wave
propagation velocities, the sensing position at a distance of
100 mm to the left beam end is reasonable to oer a large
eective detectable range.

0.15

0.15

Between 1st and 2nd laminae

0.05

0.00

-0.05

-0.10

-0.15
1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

2200

-0.05

1200

(b)

Sampling points

1400

1600

1800

2000

2200

2400

2200

2400

Sampling points
0.15

Between 3rd and 4th laminae

Between 7th and 8th laminae

0.10

Normalised stress

0.10

Normalised stress

0.00

-0.15
1000

2400

0.15

0.05

0.00

-0.05

0.05

0.00

-0.05

-0.10

-0.10

(c)

0.05

-0.10

(a)

-0.15
1000

Between 2nd and 3rd laminae

0.10

Normalised stress

Normalised stress

0.10

1200

1400

1600

1800

Sampling points

2000

2200

-0.15
1000

2400

(d)

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

Sampling points

Fig. 10. DWT-ltered Lamb wave signals for composite beams containing delamination between (a) rst and second; (b) second and third; (c) third and
fourth; and (d) seventh and eighth laminae.

N. Pan et al. / Composite Structures 75 (2006) 559570

1.00

50mm away from left end

0.75

Normalised stress

experimentally validated by identifying actual delamination in CF/EP composite beams.

Acknowledgements

0.50

Z. Su and L. Ye are grateful for the research project

grants of Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (APF) and
Discovery Project (DP) from the Australian Research
Council, respectively. This study is also partially supported
by Hong Kong Polytechnic University Grant (G-T673).

0.25
0.00
-0.25
-0.50

References

-0.75
-1.00
0

500

(a)

1000

1500

2000

2500

Sampling points

1.00

200mm away from left end

0.75

Normalised stress

569

0.50
0.25
0.00
-0.25
-0.50
-0.75
-1.00
0

500

(b)

1000

1500

2000

2500

Sampling points

Fig. 11. DWT-ltered Lamb wave signals acquired at point A (a) 50 mm

and (b) 200 mm away from the excitation source.

6. Concluding remarks
The digital damage ngerprints (DDFs)-based damage
identication approach is very eective for quantitative
damage evaluation. Such a methodology was customised
for delamination assessment in composite laminated beams
in this study. Lamb wave served as the elastic disturbance
in the structure, and DDFs of Lamb wave signals under
dierent delamination scenarios were extracted through a
three-dimensional FEM simulation technique. Validation
of the proposed approach was implemented using three
selected blind tests, and excellent quantitative assessment
on both delamination location and size was achieved. It
was found that the eectiveness of the identication
approach using DDF-based philosophy can be subjected
to the DDF amount, position and size of the delamination
to be identied, as well as the distance between the actuator
and sensor. The proposed methodology is currently being

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