Evaluating Structural Details’ Influence on Elastic Wave Propagation for Composite Structures via Ray Tracing

This study presents a novel method based on ray tracing for analyzing wave propagation in composites specifically tailored for structural health monitoring applications. This method offers distinct advantages over the commonly used finite element method mainly in computational resource utilization, which has become a limiting factor for these kinds of analyses. The ray tracing method is evaluated against a number of example cases representing structural details such as thickness changes, stringers, or simulated damage, and the significance of ray tracing to study wave propagation under these conditions and how it can serve as a valuable tool for structural health monitoring are highlighted. This model has been developed as part of a complete SHM framework with the intention of being an efficient and simple way to calculate wave propagation and therefore it could be used as a way to determine relevant damage indicators or train an artificial intelligence model.