Determination of impact location on composite stiffened panels

In this work a methodology for impact identification on composite stiffened panels using piezoceramic sensors has been presented. A large number of impacts covering a wide range of energies (corresponding to small and large mass impacts) at various locations of a composite stiffened panel have been simulated using the finite element (FE) method. To predict the impact location, artificial neural networks have been established using the data generated from FE analyses. A number of sensor signal features have been examined as inputs to the neural network and the effect of noise on the predictions has been investigated. The results of the study show that the trained network is capable of locating impacts with different energies at different locations (e.g. in the bay, over/under the stringer and on the foot of the stringer) in a complicated structure such as a composite stiffened panel.