Guided waves in structures: Applications to structural health monitoring and materials characterization.

This minisymposium aims to collect recent research addressing the propagation of elastic waves in waveguides, and their application to structural health monitoring and characterization of materials. We welcome theoretical and experimental work covering the wide range of phenomena that may be encountered, i.e. linear and non–linear behavior, acoustoelastic effect, isotropic and anisotropic materials, as well as numerical and analytical modelling techniques including 1D, 2D and 3D models, time or frequency analysis. Novel techniques to be proposed should allow to efficiently perform local and global SHM investigations, in view to carry out diagnostic (damage size estimation and damage type recognition) and prognostic (evaluation of remaining life) operations, as well as natural, biological and engineered materials characterization (determination of mechanical properties based on the observation of the dynamic response). A promising combination of the proposed techniques should lead to an innovative approach to structural safety management and to increased knowledge on the evaluation of material properties.

Key words: guided waves, SHM, damage detection, signal processing, damage imaging, ultrasonic waves, acoustoelasticity, sensors, sensing, actuators, characterization, engineered materials, biological tissues.