Baseline-free damage localization in multilayer metallic spherical shell structures using guided wave tomography

Multi-layer metal spherical shell structure is widely used as the core component of pressure-bearing equipment, deep-sea exploration equipment and other critical areas due to its plane stress uniformity and high specific strength. Its long-term service in complex and harsh environments will inevitably produce a variety of defects and damages, which will affect the safety of the equipment in service. Ultrasonic guided wave inspection is a potential non-destructive testing method, but the multilayer metal bonding structure between the metal and non-metal bonding layer impedance difference is large, resulting in defects located in the internal reflection signal is difficult to propagate to the outer layer with a sensor, the multilayer spherical shell structure itself leads to the complexity of the guided wave propagation characteristics, it is difficult to extract the individual modes of the time information for the defects of the detection and localization. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a probabilistic damage existence imaging method for spherical shell structures and combine it with the virtual time reversal technique to detect and localize the defects on the inner and outer surfaces of multilayered metallic spherical shell structures without benchmarks. The results show that the newly proposed method can realize the accurate localization imaging of internal/external defects of multilayer metal spherical shell structures.