ECCOMAS Congress 2016 VII European Congress on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences and Engineering M. Papadrakakis, V. Papadopoulos, G. Stefanou, V. Plevris (eds.) Crete Island, Greece, 5–10 June 2016 TOWARDS REAL-TIME STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING DAMAGE DETECTION WITHOUT USER INPUT M.S. Salmanpour*, Z. Sharif Khodaei, and M.H. Aliabadi Department of Aeronautics, Imperial College London South Kensington Campus, SW72AZ, London, UK. {m.salmanpour, z.sharif-khodaei, m.h.aliabadi}@imperial.ac.uk Keywords: Lamb wave, Piezoelectric, Ultrasonic, Finite elements, Composite material, Vi- bration test. Abstract. In this work a real-time damage detection platform is presented, requiring little to no user input after initial installation and set-up. Diagnostic ultrasonic signals are generated using attached piezoelectric transducers, which also serve to capture the structural response. This paper shows real-time detection in a flat CFRP panel. The necessary data acquisition and signal processing is carried out in an automated manner. A visualization of the damage map is then given as the primary output highlighting the predicted damage location. The de- veloped system is flexible in allowing scalable deployment to cater for an increased number of transducers. The detection platform is experimentally demonstrated by real-time localiza- tion of artificial damages at various locations on a CFRP panel. This was also done under operational environment vibration loading, yielding accurate damage localization. 7853