Analytical and numerical identification of lamb waves modes for hybrid composites

The current work is devoted to the problem of analytical and numerical identification of fundamental elastic waves' modes, namely symmetric mode S0 and antisymmetric mode A0, in the case of hybrid composite. The investigated material consists of one layer made of aluminum alloy Pa38 and six layers made of glass fabric/epoxy resin. At the very beginning, the dispersion curves are determined with the use of stiffness matrix method. The calculated values of phase velocities are verified by numerical simulation. The semi – analytical finite element method is applied. Next, the numerical simulations of elastic waves propagation are performed. In the studied model, the plane state of strain is assumed. These simulations are carried out with the use of finite element method. The excitation signal is a sine wave modulated by Hanning window. The simulation is repeated for different excitation frequency. The group velocities of wave modes S0 and A0 are estimated and compared with the analytical results. The evaluation of the group velocities is based on the analysis of the appropriate components of displacement. The two different method are employed, namely: cross – correlation method and envelope extraction by Hilbert transform. Generally, the obtained results are in a good agreement. However, the method based on envelope extraction by Hilbert transform provides better correlation between analytical and numerical results. The significant discrepancy is observed in the case of symmetric mode S0 for relatively high values of frequency. It is caused by the dispersion phenomena. The analytical calculations are performed with the use of SCILAB 5.5.2 free software and the numerical simulations are carried out with the use of finite element system ANSYS 13.0.