Imaging of local porosity/voids using a fully non-contact air-coupled transducer and laser Doppler vibrometer system:

This study exploits the feasibility of imaging zones of local porosity/voids simulated by introducing microspheres during layup of a unidirectional carbon fiber–reinforced polymer composite panel. A fully non-contact hybrid system primarily composed of an air-coupled transducer and a laser Doppler vibrometer was used for imaging the local porosity/void zones from the guided wave response. To improve image resolution, several preprocessing techniques are performed. The wavefield reconstructed from the laser Doppler vibrometer measurements was first “denoised” using a one-dimensional wavelet transform in the time domain followed by a two-dimensional wavelet transform in the spatial domain. From the total wavefield, the much weaker backscattered waves were separated from the stronger incident wave by frequency–wavenumber domain filtering. In order to further enhance the signal-to-noise ratio and sharpen the image, the attenuation of incident wave propagation to the damage site was compensated through two pro...