Detection and quantification of

delamination in laminated plates from

the phase of appropriate guided wave
modes

Umar Amjad
Susheel Kumar Yadav
Tribikram Kundu

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 Optical Engineering 55(1), 011006 (January 2016)

Detection and quantification of delamination in laminated

plates from the phase of appropriate guided wave modes
Umar Amjad, Susheel Kumar Yadav, and Tribikram Kundu*
University of Arizona, Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, Tucson, Arizona 85721, United States

Abstract. Applicability of specific Lamb wave modes for delamination detection and quantification in a laminated
aluminum plate is investigated. The Lamb modes were generated in the plate using a broadband piezoelectric
transducer structured with a rigid electrode. Appropriate excitation frequencies and modes for inspection were
selected from theoretical dispersion curves. Sensitivity of antisymmetric and symmetric modes for delamination
detection and quantification has been investigated using the Hilbert–Huang transform. The mode conversion
phenomenon of Lamb waves during progressive delamination is observed. The antisymmetric mode is
found to be more reliable for delamination detection and quantification. In this investigation, the changes in
the phase of guided Lamb wave modes are related to the degree of delamination, unlike other studies,
where mostly the attenuation of the propagating waves has been related to the extent of the internal damage,
such as cracks and corrosions. Appropriate features for delamination detection and quantification are extracted
from the experimental data. © 2015 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) [DOI: 10.1117/1.OE.55.1.011006]
Keywords: guided waves; dispersion; structural health monitoring; Hilbert–Huang transform; phase; time of flight.
Paper 150629SS received May 14, 2015; accepted for publication Aug. 14, 2015; published online Sep. 21, 2015.

1 Introduction is in adopting the appropriate signal processing technique

Since 1917, when Lamb mathematically analyzed the propa-
gation of the guided wave in a plate,1 its application has con-
tinued to increase. Extensive research has been conducted for
understanding the mechanics of Lamb wave propagation and
its various applications.2–8 Previous attempts to use Lamb
waves for damage detection in composite and metal plates
can be found in a number of publications.2,8–12 Piezoelectric
transducers with oblique incidence and pitch–catch configu-
ration have been popular for delamination detection.13–17
Experimentally obtained ultrasonic guided wave dispersion
curves have been plotted in time-frequency plane by short-
time Fourier transform (STFT),2,13–18 Wigner–Ville distribu-
tion (WVD),19–21 Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT),20,22–25 S
transform,26 differential time-of-flight (TOF) detection tech-
nique,27,28 and continuous wavelet transform.29 Niethammer
et al.30 and Benz et al.31 have presented guided waves in
spectrograms and identified sensitive Lamb modes for dam-
age detection in narrow frequency bands. Studies have been
conducted for suitable selection of guided wave modes and
frequency ranges for effective delamination detection.25,32–35
While most of the earlier studies have been limited to
delamination detection,2 in the present study an attempt is
made to quantify the degree of delamination in addition
to the damage detection. Which Lamb mode is most suitable,
for not only detecting but also quantifying the degree of
delimitation in laminated plates, is investigated. Earlier
Shelke et al.2 had found antisymmetric modes to be
more reliable for detecting delamination. However, neither
they quantify the extent of delamination nor tried to predict
it. In the current study, the changes in phase, TOF, and ampli-
tude of the propagating Lamb wave modes are investigated
for delamination quantification. The originality of this paper
*Address all correspondence to: Tribikram Kundu, E-mail: tkundu@email
.arizona.edu
for delamination quantification with the help of the correct
feature extraction techniques.
The feature extraction is an important component of struc-
tural health monitoring. It involves identifying damage sen-
sitive parameters from the dynamic response of a structure.20
It is needed for the assessment of the health of a structure.
The STFT has been tested by others for this purpose.
However, STFT has limitations for nonlinear and nonstation-
ary signal analysis. Its time-frequency resolution suffers
from fixed window length restriction, which results in loss of
accuracy in signal analysis. The WVD has also been used for
the time-frequency analysis. However, its limitations come
from the bilinearity and cross terms that reduce the accuracy
of the results. To overcome this drawback, Huang et al.22
introduced a new adaptive method (called HHT) for analyz-
ing nonlinear and nonstationary data. HHT is used here to
identify appropriate guided wave modes that can success-
fully quantify the degree of delamination.
2 Experimental Setup for Lamb Mode Generation
and Detection
The concept of broadband transducers with structured elec-
trodes to generate selective Lamb modes has been discussed
in detail in an earlier publication36 and is adopted here.
Experiments are conducted on 1-mm and 2-mm thick alumi-
num plates. To identify the propagating Lamb modes in
1-mm and 2-mm thick aluminum plates, dispersion curves
are needed. Dispersion curves for both symmetric and anti-
symmetric Lamb modes for these two plate thicknesses are
shown in Fig. 1. Instead of the group velocity, the TOF is
plotted along the vertical axis so that from the TOF of a spe-
cific wave packet and its frequency content (frequency is
plotted along the horizontal axis in Fig. 1) the wave mode
0091-3286/2015/$25.00 © 2015 SPIE

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 Amjad, Yadav, and Kundu: Detection and quantification of delamination in laminated plates from the phase. . .
Fig. 1 Theoretical dispersion curves for 1-mm and 2-mm thick alumi-
num plates (on the vertical axis the time of flight [TOF] is shown
instead of the group velocity): (a) antisymmetric modes and (b) sym-
metric modes.
can be easily identified for the aluminum plates of two differ-
ent thicknesses. Along the horizontal axis in Fig. 1, the fre-
quency (instead of frequency times thickness) is plotted, so
that for 1-mm and 2-mm thick plates from the frequency-
TOF combinations the Lamb mode can be easily identified
and shown next to the dispersion curves as done in the last
figure of this paper.
The experimental setup consists of a double transducer
arrangement as shown in Fig. 2.27,37 Two transducers are
placed facing each other on two surfaces of the plate.
Surface vibrations are monitored and stored separately on the
detection side. The transducers are permanently glued with
two-component epoxy resin to form a tight bond between the
plate surface and the transducer. Such bonding improves the
sensitivity of the receiving transducer to lateral vibrations.
The transducers are attached to a 19-mm wide and 1-mm
Fig. 2 Transducer configuration used as transmitter and receiver: two transducers with opposite polar-
izations are mounted on two surfaces of the plate facing each other.37
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Fig. 3 Schematic of the experimental setup: a double-ended setup
adapted for two transducers on each side. The excitation signal is
switched between in-phase and out-of-phase signals by the polarity
selector. The signals of the two receiving transducers are separately
recorded by two transient recorders.
thick aluminum plate. The square lead zirconate titanate
transducers with 20-mm side length and 0.5-mm thickness
are used. One-millimeter protrusion of the plate sample is
needed to connect the electrodes. The electrodes of roughly
0.2 mm in width are placed away from the transducer edge at
a distance of about one-third the side length of the transducer
as shown in Fig. 2.
A similar arrangement of two transducers is also placed
on the other side of the plate for generating Lamb waves. The
schematic diagram of the experimental setup is shown in
Fig. 3. The distance between the electrodes for the transmit-
ting transducer is adjusted, so the traveling time of the echoes
from the end of the aluminum strip is longer than the TOF
between the transducers. Then, the transmission signal can
be separated from the echoes by using a time window. Using
appropriate electronic circuitry, it is possible to excite the two
transmitting transducers with in-phase and out-of-phase (or
phase inverted) signals. In this manner, symmetric and anti-
symmetric Lamb modes can be generated.2,27,36,37 A chirp sig-
nal with signal frequency varying from 1 kHz to 10 MHz is
generated. The transducers with line electrodes can support
signal excitation and detection up to 6 MHz frequency.2,27,36,37
The specimen inspected is an aluminum plate of dimen-
sion 1000 mm × 19 mm × 1 mm. Aluminum properties
are—density ¼ 2.7 gm∕cc, P-wave speed ¼ 6.32 km∕s, and
S-wave speed ¼ 3.13 km∕s. The entire setup was secured
in a thermal chamber to avoid any temperature fluctuation.
Plan and elevation views of the plate geometry are shown in
Fig. 4.
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 Amjad, Yadav, and Kundu: Detection and quantification of delamination in laminated plates from the phase. . .
Fig. 4 The sample geometry: plan and elevation views are shown in
(a) and (b).
A second aluminum plate of dimension 265 mm ×
19 mm × 1 mm was cut from the aluminum sheet from
which the first plate was cut. Two plates were glued together
(using a thin layer of resin less than 0.1-mm thick) to form
the laminated aluminum plate. Therefore, the effective thick-
ness of the laminated plate is about 2 mm. A wedge of 6 deg
was polished at the two ends of the second plate for effective
transmission of Lamb waves between the 1-mm thick plate
and 2-mm thick laminated plate, as shown in Fig. 4.
Antisymmetric and symmetric Lamb modes were generated
in the aluminum plate and propagated through the laminated
region. Antisymmetric modes were generated in the frequency
range 1 to 3 MHz, while the symmetric modes were generated
first in the frequency range 200 kHz to 1 MHz to capture the
effects of delamination on the fundamental symmetric mode
S0 and then in the frequency range 4 to 5 MHz to record the
Fig. 5 Intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) calculated using HHT for the 2-mm thick laminated aluminum plate
signal.
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effects on the higher order symmetric mode S2. An arbitrary
function generator was used to generate the chirp signal. The
time-domain responses of the two receivers were arithmeti-
cally added for the symmetric mode and subtracted for the
antisymmetric mode.2,27,37
3 Time-Frequency Representations for Feature
Extraction
The feature extraction is needed to efficiently assess the
health of a structure. HHT is investigated as a possible fea-
ture extraction tool for the laminated, partially delaminated,
and fully delaminated plates. Partial delamination was cre-
ated by pressing a sharp knife/blade at the glued joint
between the two plates shown in Fig. 4. This created a
delamination of about half of the interface area. For complete
delamination, the knife is pressed harder until the second
plate (top plate of Fig. 4) is completely separated from
the first plate (bottom plate of Fig. 4). Therefore, for a com-
pletely delaminated plate, the generated Lamb modes simply
propagate through the 1-mm thick plate, while the top plate
is loosely sitting on the bottom plate.
3.1 Hilbert–Huang Transform
3.1.1 Theory of Hilbert–Huang transform
HHT has emerged as a reliable and powerful damage detec-
tion tool. In this technique, for a given signal xðtÞ, a complex
signal zðtÞ ¼ xðtÞ þ i. H½xðtÞ is first obtained. H½xðtÞ is
computed by performing a Hilbert transform on signal
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 Amjad, Yadav, and Kundu: Detection and quantification of delamination in laminated plates from the phase. . .

xðtÞ. The Hilbert transform only shifts the phase of xðtÞ by and magnitude corresponding to various peaks of Figs. 7
π∕2 keeping the magnitude same. The instantaneous fre- and 8 are shown in Tables 2 and 3, respectively.
quency fðtÞ and phase θðtÞ of the complex signal zðtÞ are Similar to antisymmetric mode, different peaks in the
then obtained from HHT plots of S0 mode (Fig. 7) were monitored as the
delamination increased. In Table 2, changes in TOF, fre-
1 dθ quency, and magnitude of various peaks are presented for
fðtÞ ¼
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e001;63;690 ; (1)
2π dt the fundamental symmetric (S0) mode. As the delamination


H½xðtÞ
θðtÞ ¼ arctan
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e002;63;650 : (2)
xðtÞ

However, xðtÞ is required to be well behaved and symmet-

rical about a horizontal line which is the axis of symmetry of
the envelopes formed by maximum and minimum ampli-
tudes. It is not the case for most real-life problems. Huang
et al.22 suggested a new method called empirical mode
decomposition method by which a signal can be decomposed
into several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) that additionally
produces the original signal with marginal errors. These
IMFs have all the necessary properties needed to be operated
by Hilbert transform and hence can provide instantaneous
frequency fðtÞ for every IMF. Further, the Hilbert energy
spectrum corresponding to the instantaneous frequency
and time is then obtained from Eðf; tÞ ¼ A2 ðf; tÞ, where
Aðf; tÞ is the amplitude of the complex signal zðtÞ.

3.1.2 Hilbert–Huang transform of Lamb wave modes

In Fig. 5, IMFs calculated by HHT are presented for the anti-
symmetric mode in the 2-mm thick (laminated) plate. This
figure shows how the transient signal can be decomposed
into a number of component signals (IMFs) having different
frequency contents—from high to low (IMFs 1 to 13) and the
residue. Similarly, IMFs are calculated from the recorded
signals for the partially delaminated (2-mm thick) and
fully delaminated (or 1-mm thick) aluminum plates but not
shown here for brevity.
In Figs. 6(a) to 6(c), HHT is applied on the transient sig-
nals obtained for the antisymmetric mode of the 2-mm thick
(laminated), partially delaminated (2-mm thick), and fully
delaminated (or 1-mm thick) aluminum plates. For compar-
ing the attenuation variation during the delamination process,
the magnitudes of the recorded signals are normalized with
respect to the maximum magnitude obtained for the 2-mm
thick laminated plate.
Different peaks in the HHT plots of Fig. 6 were monitored
as the delamination increased. In Table 1, changes in TOF,
frequency, and magnitude of various peaks are shown. As the
delamination progressed, note how some peaks almost dis-
appeared and others changed their positions along both time
and frequency axes. Change in the peak position along time
and frequency axes indicates change in TOF and frequency
content of that specific Lamb mode. Some mode conversion
is also noticed due to delamination. Increase in the peak
value with increasing delamination indicates that in the
delaminated plate the energy is mostly confined in the single
layer plate without being diverted into the second layer. All
these values (TOF, frequency, and magnitude) corresponding
to different peaks are summarized in Table 1.
IMFs and HHTs for two symmetric modes (S0 and S2) Fig. 6 Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT) plots for the antisymmetric
were then calculated. HHTs for the symmetric modes S0 and mode: (a) laminated plate (2-mm thick), (b) partially delaminated
S2 are shown in Figs. 7 and 8, respectively. Frequency, TOF, plate (2-mm thick), and (c) fully delaminated plate (1-mm thick).

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 Amjad, Yadav, and Kundu: Detection and quantification of delamination in laminated plates from the phase. . .

Table 1 Time of flight (TOF), frequency, and magnitude of Lamb wave modes obtained from Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT) plots of Fig. 6.

Plate type and thickness (mm) Time of flight (μs) Frequency (MHz) Magnitude (normalized) Lamb wave (mode)

Laminated plate (2 mm) 129  0.25 1.95  0.15 1 A(1) for 2 mm

126  0.25 1.69  0.15 0.94 A(1) for 2 mm

116  0.25 1.85  0.15 0.75 A(0) for 2 mm

Partially delaminated plate 119  0.25 1.78  0.15 27.25 A(0) for 1 mm and A(1) for 2 mm

112  0.25 1.73  0.15 20 A(1) for 1 mm

93  0.25 1.8  0.15 18.5 S(0) for 2 mm and S(1) for 1 mm

Delaminated plate (1 mm) 118  0.25 1.93  0.15 77.5 A(0) for 1 mm

107  0.25 1.8  0.15 64.2 A(1) for 1 mm

119  0.25 2.0  0.15 54 A(0) for 1 mm

progressed, changes in the peak position along time and fre- However, in this investigation, the signal xðtÞ is first proc-
quency axes were recorded and compared with theoretical essed through the empirical mode decomposition in order
calculations presented in Fig. 1. It was observed that sym- to obtain the IMFs that are well behaved and whose
metric (S0) mode converts to antisymmetric (A0) mode Hilbert transform can be obtained. The signal xðtÞ is thus
for partial delamination and to antisymmetric (A1) mode decomposed into n empirical modes Ci ðtÞ½i ¼ 1; 2; : : : n
for complete delamination. and can be expressed as
At low frequencies (200 kHz to 1 MHz), because of the
longer wavelength, the transient response could have been X
n

influenced by the side boundaries of the plate, and hence xðtÞ ¼

EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e006;326;442 Ci þ rn: (6)
i¼1
a higher frequency range (4 to 5 MHz) was selected to excite
the higher order symmetric mode (S2). S2 mode showed
The residue rn , which is a mean trend, has been left out on
changes in the peak position along both time and frequency
purpose. Then, the Hilbert transform is applied to every IMF
axes (Fig. 8 and Table 3), but no mode conversion from sym-
metric to antisymmetric mode. that produces the instantaneous phase as a function of time.


H½Ci ðtÞ
3.1.3 Hilbert instantaneous phase θi ðtÞ ¼ arctan : (7)
Ci ðtÞ
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e007;326;361

The Hilbert instantaneous phase has also been used for dam-
age detection.19,24,38 Unlike other time-frequency methods, The total instantaneous phase is the sum of the instanta-
the Hilbert transform of a real-valued time-domain signal neous phases corresponding to every IMF and is defined as
xðtÞ gives another real-valued time-domain signal, denoted

by H½xðtÞ, such that zðtÞ ¼ xðtÞ þ iH½xðtÞ is an analytic Xn
H½Ci ðtÞ
θðtÞ ¼ arctan : (8)
signal, where Ci ðtÞ
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e008;326;294

i¼1
Z∞
1 xðuÞ Because the intrinsic modes are restricted to be symmetric
H½xðtÞ ¼ du: (3)
π t−u about the mean zero level, the phase can be considered to be
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e003;63;261

−∞ local and increasing monotonically as a function of time. The

We can define an envelope function aðtÞ describing the
instantaneous amplitudes of the original signal xðtÞ and a
phase function θðtÞ describing the instantaneous phase of
xðtÞ versus time using ZðtÞ ¼ xðtÞ þ iH½xðtÞ ¼ aðtÞeiθðtÞ .
These instantaneous parameters are defined as
aðtÞ ¼ fxðtÞ2 þ H½xðtÞ2 g1∕2
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e004;63;150
and


H½xðtÞ
θðtÞ ¼ arctan
EQ-TARGET;temp:intralink-;e005;63;107
instantaneous frequencies are derived by taking the deriva-
tive of the phase [see Eq. (1)], and therefore the continuity of
the phase is needed. Unwrapped phase calculation preserves
this continuity. The unwrapped phase, as shown in Fig. 9, is
no longer restricted within an interval length of 2π and can
monotonically increase.
In Fig. 9, a clear change in phase can be observed at 73 
(4) 1 μs that corresponds to the arrival time of the fastest propa-
gating symmetric guided wave mode (see Fig. 1). At other
times (for example 155  1 μs), no such jumps in the
unwrapped phase plot are observed in Fig. 9. The unwrapped
: (5)
phase variations at these two times (73 and 155 μs) are

xðtÞ
shown in Fig. 10 for different extents of delamination.
Therefore, the instantaneous Hilbert phase is defined for Similar trends can also be observed at other times but are
the real-valued time-domain signal xðtÞ as shown in Eq. (5). not shown here.

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 Amjad, Yadav, and Kundu: Detection and quantification of delamination in laminated plates from the phase. . .

Fig. 7 Hilbert–Huang transform plots for symmetric mode S0: (a) lami-
nated plate, (b) partially delaminated plate, and (c) fully delaminated Fig. 8 Hilbert–Huang transform plots for symmetric mode S2: (a) lami-
plate. nated plate, (b) partially delaminated plate, and (c) fully delaminated
plate.

Similarly, Figs. 11 and 12 show the unwrapped phases for
S0 mode (200 kHz to 1 MHz) and S2 mode (4 to 5 MHz),
respectively, for laminated, partially delaminated, and fully
delaminated plates.
Unlike antisymmetric mode (Fig. 9), symmetric modes do
not show any clear trend with the progression of delamina-
tion. Figure 11 shows a shift in phase around 130 μs. This is
due to mode conversion from symmetric (S0) mode to anti-
symmetric mode as shown in Fig. 7 and Table 2.
4 Discussion of the Results
This investigation revealed that for detection and quantifica-
tion of the delamination in laminated plates, antisymmetric

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Table 2 TOF, frequency, and magnitude of Lamb modes obtained from HHT plots of Fig. 7.

Plate type and thickness (mm) Time of flight (μs) Frequency (kHz) Magnitude (normalized) Lamb wave (mode)

Laminated plates (2 mm) 88  0.25 505  10 1 S(0) for 2 mm

78  0.25 500  10 0.92 S(0) for 2 mm

90  0.25 539  10 0.77 S(0) for 2 mm

Partially delaminated plates 105  0.25 475  10 1.6 S(0) for 1 mm

119  0.25 300  10 1.58 A(0) for 1 mm

108  0.25 377  10 1.54 S(0) for 1 mm

Delaminated plates (1 mm) 100  0.25 520  10 2.0 S(0) 1 mm

100  0.25 420  10 1.9 S(0) 1 mm

102  0.25 900  10 1.6 S(0) for 1 mm and A(1) for 1 mm

Table 3 TOF, frequency, and magnitude of Lamb modes obtained from HHT plots of Fig. 8.

Plate type and thickness (mm) Time of flight (μs) Frequency (MHz) Magnitude (normalized) Lamb wave (mode)

Laminated plates (2 mm) 120  0.25 4.96  0.15 1 S(2) for 2 mm

119  0.25 4.44  0.15 0.95 S(2) for 2 mm

117  0.25 4.69  0.15 0.84 S(2) for 2 mm

Partially delaminated plates 120  0.25 4.68  0.15 2.8 S(2) for 1 mm

120  0.25 4.64  0.15 2.7 S(2) for 2 mm

126  0.25 4.74  0.15 2.45 S(2) and S(0) for 1 mm

Delaminated plates (1 mm) 95  0.25 4.66  0.15 11.2 S(2) for 1 mm

151  0.25 4.64  0.15 8.4 S(1) and S(2) for 1 mm

112  0.25 4.62  0.15 9.2 S(2) for 1 mm

Fig. 9 Unwrapped phase for antisymmetric (A0) mode calculated
using HHT for the laminated, partially delaminated, and fully delami-
nated aluminum plates.
modes are preferred over symmetric modes (S0 and S2) for
the following reasons.
The antisymmetric modes went through mode conversion
from antisymmetric to symmetric as delamination pro-
gressed. With increasing delamination for the antisymmetric
modes, consistent changes in TOF, magnitude, phase, and
frequency were observed. However, for the symmetric (S0)
mode at low frequencies, although a mode conversion from
symmetric to antisymmetric mode was observed, it was
accompanied by inconsistent changes in TOF, magnitude,
phase, and frequency shifts. At higher frequencies, the sym-
metric mode (S2) did not show any mode conversion due to
delamination.
In short, it can be stated that when the antisymmetric
modes were used for monitoring the laminated plate then
magnitude, phase, and TOF of the signal monotonically var-
ied with the degree of delamination; therefore, antisymmetric
modes are preferred for damage quantification. When the
symmetric modes were used for plate monitoring then incon-
sistent variations in TOF, phase, and magnitude with increas-
ing delamination were observed; hence, these modes are not
good for damage quantification.

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 Amjad, Yadav, and Kundu: Detection and quantification of delamination in laminated plates from the phase. . .
Fig. 10 Unwrapped phase for antisymmetric (A0) mode for various degrees of delamination: intact lami-
nated (or no delamination), partially delaminated, and fully delaminated plates; results are presented for
the first arrival: (a) at time 73  1 μs and (b) later arrival at 155  1 μs.
Fig. 11 Unwrapped phase for symmetric (S0) mode calculated using
HHT for intact laminated plate, partially delaminated plate, and fully
delaminated plate.
Fig. 12 Unwrapped phase for symmetric (S2) mode calculated using
HHT for intact laminated plate, partially delaminated plate, and fully
delaminated plate.
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In Fig. 13, dominant peak positions for the antisymmetric
modes obtained from the HHT (see Fig. 6 and Table 1) are
shown by dotted ellipses against the TOF and frequency.
Dispersion curves for the antisymmetric modes from Fig. 1
are also shown in Fig. 13 to identify which strong peak of
HHT plot corresponds to which Lamb mode.
From Fig. 13, one can see that two strong peaks in the
HHT plot for the intact laminated plate correspond to A0
and A1 modes. For the partially delaminated plate, these
two peaks appear close to each other and for the fully delami-
nated plate A0 mode becomes the dominant mode. Such
identification of the modes is not possible without the
dispersion curves as plotted in Figs. 1 and 13. It should be
noted here that for the dispersion curve computation, we con-
sidered a plate of finite thickness but of infinite width. A
plate of finite width produces slightly different dispersion
curves than those for a plate of infinite width.39 Since no ana-
lytical expression is available for dispersion curves of plates
having finite width that solution is not presented here.
However, even after ignoring the plate width effect, the
matching between the experimental results (dotted ellipse)
and the theoretical dispersion curves is found to be very
good, as shown in Fig. 13.
5 Conclusions
Sensitivity of various Lamb wave modes to delamination-
type damage in laminated aluminum plates is investigated.
It is experimentally observed that fundamental antisymmet-
ric mode is highly sensitive to the presence of delamination.
Antisymmetric mode shows mode conversion when it inter-
acts with delamination-type defect. HHT is known to be an
ideal tool for identifying different propagating Lamb modes
in the transient signal and for selecting the right mode for
damage detection. The phase of propagating Lamb wave
modes appears to be a promising new feature for delamina-
tion detection and quantification. Conversion of antisymmet-
ric (A1) mode to fundamental antisymmetric (A0) mode
indicates the presence of delamination. The fundamental
symmetric mode (S0) was also tested for detecting delami-
nation. It was found that at low frequencies symmetric (S0)
mode converts to the antisymmetric mode due to delamina-
tion. However, at low frequencies, the magnitude, frequency,
and the TOF of the symmetric mode did not monotonically
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 Amjad, Yadav, and Kundu: Detection and quantification of delamination in laminated plates from the phase. . .
Fig. 13 Group velocity dispersion curves for antisymmetric modes
(continuous and dashed lines) and positions of the dominant peaks
in the Hilbert–Huang transform plots of Fig. 6 are shown (by dotted
ellipses): (a) intact laminated plate, (b) partially delaminated plate,
and (c) fully delaminated plate.
change with the degree of delamination. One reason could be
that it is influenced by the finite width of the plate because of
the longer wavelength at lower frequencies. Therefore, the S0
mode could be used only as a weak indicator of delamination
in laminated plates, but is not very reliable for quantification
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of delamination due to its inconsistent or nonmonotonic
nature. At higher frequencies, symmetric mode S2 did not
show any mode conversion due to delamination. Thus, sym-
metric modes showed either no mode conversion or incon-
sistent changes in the frequency, TOF, and magnitude with
the degree of delamination. Therefore, symmetric modes are
not recommended for delamination quantification or detec-
tion. Antisymmetric modes, on the other hand, showed more
consistent changes with the degree of delamination. There-
fore, these modes are recommended for detection and quan-
tification of degree of delamination in laminated plates.
Acknowledgments
Partial financial support from the Air Force Office of
Scientific Research (AFOSR) under Grant No. FA9550-
08-1-0318 is gratefully acknowledged.
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Umar Amjad received his master’s degree in experimental physics
from the University of Leipzig, Germany, in 2008. He received his
PhD in civil engineering and engineering mechanics from the Univer-
sity of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, in 2014. His research interests
include phase-sensitive acoustic microscopy, experimental investiga-
tions using guided waves, and feature extraction techniques for online
structural health monitoring.
Susheel Kumar Yadav received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees
in civil engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in
2003 and 2007, respectively. He received his PhD in engineering
mechanics from the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, in 2013.
Currently, he is working as senior project engineer at Acellent Tech-
nologies Inc., Sunnyvale, California. His research interests include
modeling of ultrasonic wave field in defective materials and feature
extraction techniques for online structural health monitoring.
Tribikram Kundu is a professor at the University of Arizona. His
research interest is in the NDE/SHM area. He is a fellow of SPIE,
ASME, ASCE, ASA, and ASNT, and winner of the 2003 Humboldt
Research Prize (senior scientist award) and 1989/1996 Humboldt
Fellowship awards from Germany, 2012 NDE Life Time Achievement
award from SPIE, 2015 Research award for Sustained Excellence
from ASNT, and 2008 Person of the Year award from the Structural
Health Monitoring Journal.
January 2016 • Vol. 55(1)