Vibration-based damage identification in composite circular plates using polar discrete wavelet transform

Non-destructive damage identification is one of the most important problems in maintenance and reliability of composite structures. The methods applied for damage identification should be sensitive for external and internal damages and provide their precise localization. One of the promising methods for the damage identification is the wavelet transform applied to modal shapes of investigated objects. If the investigated object has circular geometry it is suitable to adapt the algorithm of damage identification to polar coordinate system. The paper presented an application of polar wavelet transform in order to detect and identify various types of damages occurred in composite structures with circular geometry. Several (external and internal) types of damages were considered in the presented study. Basing on comparative study the most adequate polar wavelets for damage identification problems were selected.