Impact location in plates using hyperbolic interpolation of compensated guided waves detected by passive low-profile PZTs

A passive method for impact location in plate-like structures is proposed. The approach is based on a dispersion compensation procedure of guided waves signals detected at multiple sensors. Signal compensation is achieved by means of a Warped Frequency Transform (WFT) once the dispersion curves of the propagating guided waves have been computed for the considered waveguide. Next, the cross-correlation between two compensated signals is used to extract the difference in traveled distance between the source point and the two receivers. This information, computed for at least two couple of sensors, is finally used to feed an hyperbolic position algorithm to pin-point the impact location.