An Impact Location Method Based on Transmission Coefficient Weighted Impact Intensity

The stiffened plate has complex influences on the propagation characteristics of Lamb waves, which causes difficulties for the impact location. In order to realize the impact location in stiffened plate, this paper proposes a transmission coefficient weighted impact intensity (TCWII) method. The method uses cross-correlation curves to calculate impact intensity maps and reduce the location error by superposing the maps of different filter bands. The transmission coefficient weights for different bands are applied to compensate for the effect of the stiffeners on the signal propagation. By finding the maximum impact intensity point in the transmission coefficient weighted impact intensity map, the impact point can be located. To evaluate the performance of the TCWII method, 130 sets of experiments have been taken. The location result shows the TCWII method can achieve good performance in stiffened plate with an average error of 2.29 cm in 50cm × 50 cm testing range. The comparation with the traditional TDOA method shows the TCWII has improvement on accuracy in stiffened plates.