Damage detection of composite structures by a hybrid method combining CorV and wavelet transform

A hybrid method combining the correlation function amplitude vector (CorV) and the continuous wavelet transform (CWT) was proposed to detect damage of composite structures. In the method, only the time domain signals of the intact and damaged structure were required in the detection procedure. The CorVs between the time domain responses of the intact and damaged structures under steady random excitation were calculated and then analyzed by continuous wavelet transform, where the biorthogonal wavelet function was adopted. The damage of the structure can be identified by the difference between wavelet coefficients of the intact and damaged structures. The damage location was determined by the maximum value of the modulus of the coefficients difference obtained from CorVs. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed hybrid method is verified by numerical simulations of delamination damage detection of a composite beam and a laminate plate.