An open database for benchmarking guided waves structural health monitoring algorithms on a composite full-scale outer wing demonstrator

This article reports on the creation of an open database of piezo-actuated and piezo-received guided wave signals propagating in a composite panel of a full-scale aeronautical structure. The composite panel closes the bottom part of a wingbox that, along with the leading edge, the trailing edge, and the wingtip, forms an outer wing demonstrator approximately 4.5 m long and from 1.2 to 2.3 m wide. To create the database, a structural health monitoring system, composed of a software/hardware central unit capable of controlling a network of 160 piezoelectric transducers secondarily bonded on the composite panel, has been realized. The structural health monitoring system has been designed to (1) perform electromechanical impedance measurement at each transducer, in order to check for their reliability and bonding strength, and (2) to operate an active guided wave screening for damage detection in the composite panel. Electromechanical impedance and guided wave measurements were performed at four different testing stages: before loading, before fatigue, before impacts, and after impacts. The database, freely available at http://shm.ing.unibo.it/, can thus be used to benchmarking, on real-scale structural data, guided wave algorithms for loading, fatigue, as well as damage detection, characterization, and sizing. As an example, in this work, a delay and sum algorithm is applied on the post-impact data to illustrate how the database can be exploited.