Lamb Waves for Structural Health Monitoring in Viscoelastic Composite Materials

Strucural Health Monitoring (SHM) is a novel philosophy for an autonomous, built-in nondestructive evalution of structural "health" on demand to reduce life-cycle costs, increase safety and reduce structural weight. This dissertation investigates ultrasonic guided waves, particulary Lamb waves, and their propagation properties as a method to perform Health Monitoring of viscoelastic composite structures.