Lamb mode stresses as means of identifying voids in the adhesive zone of bilaminates

Lamb wave technique has emerged as a reliable tool in the nondestructive testing of laminated plates. Some current studies to identify the specific Lamb modes that can characterize different kinds of defects in layered plates using Lamb waves have shown that the modes for which high stresses and low displacements occur in the interface indicate the presence of defects like pores or voids whereas the modes for which the displacements are high show the presence of harder inclusions. In this context this paper tests an earlier analytical model developed to facilitate NDT of porosity in the adhesive zone of bilaminates. The model tested treats the pore infested thin adhesive region as a linear elastic material with voids (LEMV). For certain parametric values of the LEMV adhesive layer the influence of these voids on dispersion and stresses carried by the first few Lamb modes in glass/glue/glass (G/g/G) bilaminate is traced in the range 0–10 MHz. The frequency–phase velocity points experimentally obtained by Kundu and Maslov are seen to fall very close to the present dispersion. The stresses traced using the present model in G/g/G plate at these experimentally tallied points show an easily discernable rise in the central region of adhesive, as observed by Kundu and Maslov. The model appears to be useful as a good first approximation to detect voids in adhesive zone of composite structural elements.