Steerable Unidirectional Wave Emission From a Single Piezoelectric Transducer Using a Shape Memory Alloy Composite Metasurface

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) systems generally adopt piezoelectric transducers which emit omnidirectional wave fields. The achievement of directionality of guided wave generation will benefit the structural sensing purpose, which allows better detection and localization of the damage sites. In this study, a type of metamaterial ultrasonic radar is proposed for the steerable unidirectional wave manipulation. It contains a circular array of unit cells stuck in an aluminum plate which are delicately arranged in a circular fashion. Each unit cell is composed of a shape memory alloy substrate and a lead stub. The controllable bandgap of such metamaterial system can be achieved due to the stiffness change of nitinol between its martensite phase and austenite phase under a thermal load. This research starts with a Finite Element Model (FEM) of the unit cell to compute its frequency-wavenumber domain dispersion characteristics, demonstrating the adjustable bandgap feature. Then, numerical modeling of the metamaterial radar is performed by shifting the bandgap of one sector of the metasurface away from the excitation frequency. The modeling results demonstrate that the martensite phase metasurface area forms a bandgap region where guided wave energy cannot penetrate, while the bandgap of the austenite sector shifts away from the excitation frequency, opening up a transmission path for the ultrasonic waves. By rotating the austenite sector, the metamaterial structure can work like a wave emission radar, realizing of the steerable unidirectional wave radiation with a single transducer. Such an active metasurface possesses great application potential in future SHM and NDE systems.