Time reversibility of Lamb waves in thin plates with surface-bonded piezoelectric transducers is temperature invariant at the best reconstruction frequency

The Lamb wave time-reversal method has been widely proposed as a baseline-free method for damage detection in thin-walled structures. Under varying thermal environments, it would require that the time reversibility of Lamb waves is temperature invariant. In this study, we examine the temperature dependence of Lamb waves and its time reversibility using experiments and finite element simulations on isotropic plates with surface-bonded piezoelectric wafer transducers for actuation and sensing. The study is conducted at three different temperatures of the system from 25°C to 75°C for a wide range of excitation frequency. The results indicate that the time reversibility can undergo significant changes due to temperature variations depending on the excitation frequency. However, at the best reconstruction frequency corresponding to the maximum similarity of the reconstructed signal with the original input signal (proposed recently as the probing frequency), the change in the percent similarity with temperature is insignificant. The results also demonstrate that changes in the physical properties of both adhesive layers and piezoelectric transducers with temperature play a dominant role in influencing Lamb wave amplitudes. However, only the change in the characteristics of the adhesive layers is responsible for the temperature dependence of the time reversibility of Lamb waves.