Characterization of viscoelastic moduli and thickness of isotropic, viscoelastic plates using multi-modal Lamb waves

This paper presents an approach exploiting the sensitivity of Lamb waves for characterizing the viscoelastic moduli and thickness of plates. The analytical sensitivity functions are first derived in the case of an isotropic plate and are integrated into an iterative inverse problem to optimize its viscoelastic moduli and thickness based on a zero-finding approach (Gauss–Newton algorithm for a multivariable problem). This method is validated numerically for a viscoelastic plate and shows high accuracy and low computational cost when compared to existing methods. Experimental validation demonstrates the ability of the algorithm to assess simultaneously the viscoelastic moduli and the thickness of isotropic plate-like structures.