Imaging of local porosity/voids using a fully non-contact air-coupled transducer and laser Doppler vibrometer system

This study exploits the feasibility of imaging zones of local porosity/voids simulated by introducing microspheres during layup of a unidirectional carbon fiber–reinforced polymer composite panel. A fully non-contact hybrid system primarily composed of an air-coupled transducer and a laser Doppler vibrometer was used for imaging the local porosity/void zones from the guided wave response. To improve image resolution, several preprocessing techniques are performed. The wavefield reconstructed from the laser Doppler vibrometer measurements was first “denoised” using a one-dimensional wavelet transform in the time domain followed by a two-dimensional wavelet transform in the spatial domain. From the total wavefield, the much weaker backscattered waves were separated from the stronger incident wave by frequency–wavenumber domain filtering. In order to further enhance the signal-to-noise ratio and sharpen the image, the attenuation of incident wave propagation to the damage site was compensated through two proposed weight functions. Finally, a zero-lag cross-correlation was performed for imaging the zone where the compensated incident and backscattered waves were in phase. This improved imaging condition, the “denoised” weighted zero-lag cross-correlation, was proposed and tested for defect imaging in the composite panel with eight intentionally introduced zones of high porosity/voids of varying diameters (1.59–6.35 mm) and depths (0.36–1.08 mm). As expected, the sensitivity of the non-contact air-coupled transducer/laser Doppler vibrometer hybrid system was limited by the wavelength of the excitation signal. The system incorporated with the denoised weighted zero-lag cross-correlation imaging condition for guided wave interrogation gave similar image quality in comparison with that by the immersion C-scan.