Chapter 6

Guided Waves

This chapter will deal with an important class of waves that have widespread applications in SHM – the class of guided waves. Guided waves are especially important for SHM because they can travel large distances in structures with only little energy loss. Thus, they enable the SHM of large areas from a single location. The chapter starts with Rayleigh waves, a.k.a. surface acoustic waves (SAW), which travel close to a free surface with very little penetration in the depth of the solid. For this reason, Rayleigh waves are also known as surface-guided waves. The chapter continues with shear-horizontal (SH) waves in plates. The particle motion of SH waves is polarized parallel to the plate surface and perpendicular to the ...

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