Ultrasonic Guided Waves (UGW) are widely used in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) due to their ability to inspect large areas with minimal sensor instrumentation. However, the acquired signals can be challenging to interpret, as they are highly sensitive to material properties, environmental factors and operating conditions. To enhance interpretability and comparability, simplifying these signals into dimensionless quantities is crucial. This study employs finite element (FE) method to model cracks in a thin aluminum panel, aiming to identify the most effective post-processing technique for UGW signals acquired by a network of piezoelectric sensors distributed across the panel’s surface. Damage indicators in both the frequency and time domains are evaluated based on their correlation with critical crack parameters, such as position and size. The findings contribute to optimizing monitoring techniques for timely and accurate damage diagnosis in thin structures, offering valuable insights for predictive maintenance in SHM applications.

Monitoring the structural integrity of aeronautical structures is critical for safety, reducing maintenance costs, and enabling predictive maintenance. However, raw structural health monitoring (SHM) data are often noisy, high-dimensional, and difficult to interpret. To enable condition-based maintenance, it is essential to extract health indicators (HIs)—quantitative representations of structural degradation that evolve consistently over time. Accurately extracting HIs for composite structures is particularly challenging due to complex material behavior and multiple damage sources. While deep learning models offer potential, their application is limited by the lack of run-to-failure data and ground-truth HI labels. To address these challenges, this study proposes a novel approach that divides HI modeling into two tasks: time-independent (spatial) and time-dependent (temporal). This separation allows more effective data utilization, especially in the time-independent case. A semi-supervised spatial model is first developed and fine-tuned using a Bayesian algorithm with a coupled physics-based loss function that integrates both prognostic criteria and simulated labels—explicitly through the former and implicitly through the latter—embedding degradation physics into training. The study also introduces a new adaptive standardization technique for fatigue-based SHM and systematically evaluates principal component analysis (PCA)-based methods for dimensionality reduction prior to spatial and temporal modeling, simplifying subsequent network architectures. In the final stage, following time-based resampling, a semi-supervised temporal model captures HI evolution, with ensemble learning enhancing robustness. Validation on single-stiffener composite panels under fatigue loading, monitored via acoustic emission sensors, confirms the framework's generalizability and performance—achieving up to 90% (±2%) accuracy in prognostic metrics.

This work presents a data analysis-based, group-aware framework for predicting quality indicators with anomaly detection in non-i.i.d. datasets that exhibit short temporal dependencies. The design is motivated by statistical diagnostics of temporal autocorrelation and intraclass variance, which highlight the need for causal temporal encoding and group-level decomposition. The framework integrates a residual-boosted regressor, a group-aware anomaly detector, and a calibrated fusion scheme that balances precision and recall. Evaluation is conducted on real production data from hot strip mill operations, with coiling temperature prediction serving as a case study. A key contribution is interpreting coiling temperature dips, previously treated as outliers, as proxies for surface anomalies, thereby enabling their explicit detection. Results demonstrate consistent gains over physics-based and tabular machine learning baselines, confirming that the framework provides more reliable quality-risk indication for decision support in industrial predictive-control workflows.

Predicting the remaining useful life (RUL) of composite structures is particularly challenging in impact-damaged carbon fiber–reinforced polymers (CFRPs) under compressive fatigue, where delamination growth with complex morphology and stochastic progression often governs failure. Guided wave–based structural health monitoring (GW-SHM) enables sensitive damage characterization, yet RUL prediction remains difficult due to the strong dependence of GW–delamination interactions on excitation frequency and damage geometry. Physics-based models often struggle to generalize beyond specific configurations, whereas purely data-driven models can capture complex patterns but typically lack consistency with the underlying physical mechanisms. This study introduces a multi-level, frequency-aware prognostic framework that combines the adaptability of deep learning with the physical interpretability of engineered features. GW signals acquired at multiple excitation frequencies are transformed into time- and time–frequency representations, while damage indicators are derived through temporal segmentation. These indicators are correlated with delamination growth measured by C-scan inspections, providing a link between signal-derived features and physical damage evolution. The multi-level architecture integrates convolutional neural networks, multilayer perceptrons, and long short-term memory layers to capture complementary aspects of degradation. Experimental assessment on seven specimens demonstrates that the proposed framework achieves a minimum mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 1.904, corresponding to 11% and 55% improvements over the highest- and lowest-performing single-frequency baselines at 160 kHz and 100 kHz, respectively. The results confirm that integrating GW signal processing with deep learning yields robust and physically consistent RUL predictions for impact-damaged CFRPs, while enhancing the interpretability of prognostic outcomes.

Designing health indicators (HIs) for aerospace composite structures that demonstrate their health comprehensively, including all types of damage that can be adaptively updated, is challenging, especially under complex conditions like impact and compression-fatigue loadings. This paper introduces a new AI-based approach to designing reliable HIs (fulfilling requirements—monotonicity, prognosability, and trendability—referred to as ’Fitness’) for single-stiffener composite panels under fatigue loading using acoustic emission sensors. It incorporates complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise for feature extraction, semi-supervised base deep learner models made of long short-term memory layers for information fusion, and a semi-supervised paradigm to simulate labels inspired by the physics of progressive damage. In this way, nondifferentiable prognostic criteria are implicitly implemented into the learning process. Ensemble learning, especially using a semi-supervised network built with bidirectional long short-term memory, improves HI quality while reducing deep learning randomness. The Fitness function equation has been modified to provide a more trustworthy foundation for comparison and enhance the practical reliability of the standard in prognostics and health management. Ablation experiments are conducted, including variations in dataset division and leave-one-out cross-validation, confirming the generalizability of the approach.

The digitalization era has introduced an abundance of data that can be harnessed to monitor and predict the health of structures. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for post-prognosis decision-making that utilizes deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to manage maintenance decisions on multi-component systems subject to imperfect repairs. The proposed framework integrates raw sensory data acquisition, feature extraction, prognostics, imperfect repair modeling, and decision-making. This integration considers all these tasks independent, promoting flexibility and paving the way for more advanced and adaptable maintenance solutions in real-world applications. The framework's effectiveness is demonstrated through a case study involving tension-tension fatigue experiments on open-hole aluminum coupons representing multiple dependent components, where the ability to make stochastic RUL estimations and schedule maintenance actions is evaluated. The results demonstrate that the framework can effectively extend the lifecycle of the system while accommodating uncertainties in maintenance actions. This work utilizes the Value of Information to choose the optimal times to acquire new data, resulting in computational efficiency and significant resource savings. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of decomposing uncertainty into epistemic and aleatoric to convert the total uncertainty into decision probabilities over the chosen actions, ensuring reliability and enhancing the interpretability of the DRL model.

Maintenance decisions often involve choosing between replacement and repair. The shortage of essential replacement parts has led to increased exploration of repair methodologies. However, repairs are often imperfect, leading to additional uncertainties in predicting the component's future condition. Existing approaches in the literature for modeling imperfect repairs struggle when repair dynamics are unknown requiring a large amount of data to be reliable. Furthermore, current methods are very task-specific, which limits the optimization of maintenance planning of varying components. This research addresses these challenges by conceptualizing imperfect repair effects as a stochastic increase in Remaining Useful Life (RUL). An existing deep learning model extracts prognostic-related features that can be utilized by any prognostic model to estimate RUL based on sensor data. Then, the proposed imperfect repair model predicts the RUL increase post-repair. This method offers three key benefits: (i) proactive post-repair assessment for improved maintenance, (ii) a data-driven repair model compatible with existing prognostic models, and (iii) flexibility in adapting to different repair techniques. Evaluation of the proposed model is conducted through tension-tension fatigue experiments on aerospace-grade aluminium specimens subject to imperfect repair. Results demonstrate the model's ability to accurately estimate the post-repair stochastic RUL increase.

Abstract: Remaining useful life predictions depend on the quality of health indicators (HIs) generated from condition monitoring sensors, evaluated by predefined prognostic metrics such as monotonicity, prognosability, and trendability. Constructing these HIs requires effective models capable of automatically selecting and fusing features from pertinent measurements, given the inherent noise in sensory data. While deep learning approaches have the potential to automatically extract features without the need for significant specialist knowledge, these features lack a clear (physical) interpretation. Furthermore, the evaluation metrics for HIs are nondifferentiable, limiting the application of supervised networks. This research aims to develop an intrinsically interpretable ANN, targeting qualified HIs with significantly lower complexity. A semi-supervised paradigm is employed, simulating labels inspired by the physics of progressive damage. This approach implicitly incorporates nondifferentiable criteria into the learning process. The architecture comprises additive and newly modified multiplicative layers that combine features to better represent the system’s characteristics. The developed multiplicative neurons are not restricted to pairwise actions, and they can also handle both division and multiplication. To extract a compact HI equation, making the model mathematically interpretable, the number of parameters is further reduced by discretizing the weights via a ternary set. This weight discretization simplifies the extracted equation while gently controlling the number of weights that should be overlooked. The developed methodology is specifically tailored to construct interpretable HIs for commercial turbofan engines, showcasing that the generated HIs are of high quality and interpretable.

Damage imaging plays a crucial role in structural health monitoring (SHM) systems for fast and efficient damage assessment. Delay-and-sum (DAS) beamforming is a widely used algorithm in non-destructive testing for damage imaging, but its effectiveness is often compromised by the use of sparse ultrasonic transducer arrays and the difficulty in detecting progressive delamination larger than the wavelength using guided wave-based methods under fatigue loading. Although X-ray imaging offers detailed assessments of progressive delamination, its application is still limited due to the need to interrupt fatigue loading cycles and its high operational cost. To this end, we propose a novel Damage Imaging framework that uses the fine-tuned Conditional Diffusion Model for SHM systems (DI-CDM). Leveraging the powerful image generation capabilities of diffusion models, the framework was fine-tuned by combining DAS beamforming images derived from ultrasonic sparse array data with X-ray images captured during fatigue loading cycles of the composite structures. The proposed approach can generate damage images that reveal the progression of delamination size in the fatigue loading process. The framework was validated through numerical simulations and experimental data from NASA datasets for composite structures, demonstrating its potential and effectiveness by applying diffusion models in SHM applications to enable fast, high-resolution damage imaging.

Structural health monitoring using strain data faces a critical challenge: decoupling subtle structural degradation signatures from the dominant influence of operational loads. This paper introduces a novel methodology to address this by synergistically combining a custom health indicator (HI) with graph neural networks (GNNs). The proposed HI, derived from the cumulative absolute first derivative of strain over time, effectively isolates load-independent features indicative of damage progression. These features serve as input to our proposed GENConv with Edge Attributes (GENEA) model, a GNN that explicitly models the spatially distributed sensors as an interconnected network, leveraging spatial interdependencies and edge attribute information within the strain field to enhance damage assessment. This integrated approach enables accurate structural stiffness reduction estimation (diagnostics) and remaining useful life (RUL) prediction (prognostics). Applied to strain data from fatigue tests on representative aeronautical composite panels, the methodology is rigorously evaluated using Leave-One-Panel-Out cross-validation. The framework shows promising performance on unseen test data, although challenges in generalizing to out-of-distribution specimens were also identified, highlighting the importance of a diverse training set for real-world applicability. Experimental results confirm the framework’s superiority. The proposed GENEA model significantly outperforms both a fundamental multi-layer perceptron and a spatially aware convolutional neural network baseline, and successfully generalizes to an unseen panel with a different sensor count. This validates the benefits of using a tailored GNN framework to learn robust, geometrically invariant patterns from load-decoupled spatial strain data.

Wind turbine blades carry the risk of impact damage during transportation, installation, and operation. Such impacts can cause levels of damage that can propagate throughout the structure compromising performance and safety. In this study, the effect of impact damage on fatigue damage propagation in test specimens representative of a spar cap-shear web adhesively-bonded connection of a wind turbine blade was investigated. In addition, the effectiveness of using acoustic emissions to detect early impact-induced fatigue damage was studied. Three impact tests with increasing levels of energy were investigated. The results showed that for an impact test with an average energy of 16.32 J, the fatigue damage accumulation process was not influenced by the size and location of the impact damage. But for impact tests with an average energy of 23.68 J and 32.13 J, greater crack density and accelerated de-lamination and de-bonding of the adhesive from the laminate could be seen in the impact zone. Acoustic emission was shown to identify the position of the damage zone for the higher energy impact tests. It was also effective in showing the progressive accumulation of fatigue damage in this zone during the fatigue test.

Developing comprehensive health indicators (HIs) for composite structures encompassing various damage types is challenging due to the stochastic nature of damage accumulation and uncertain events (like impact) during operation. This complexity is amplified when striving for HIs independent of historical data. This paper introduces an AI-driven approach, the Hilbert transform-convolutional neural network under a semi-supervised learning paradigm, to designing reliable HIs (fulfilling requirements, referred to as 'fitness'). It exclusively utilizes current guided wave data, eliminating the need for historical information. Ensemble learning techniques were also used to enhance HI quality while reducing deep learning randomness. The fitness equation is refined for dependable comparisons and practicality. The methodology is validated through investigations on T-single stiffener CFRP panels under compression-fatigue and dogbone CFRP specimens under tension-fatigue loadings, showing high performance of up to 93% and 81%, respectively, in prognostic criteria.

Continuous monitoring of spray velocity during the cold spray process would be desirable to support quality control, as spray velocity is the key process parameter determining the deposit quality. This study explores the feasibility of utilising Airborne Acoustic Emission (AAE) for real-time monitoring of spray velocity. Six spray tests were conducted, varying pressure and temperature to achieve different velocities. Optical means were used to measure velocity; while, the signal from the AAE was captured during deposition via a microphone. Features demonstrating a strong correlation with velocity were extracted from the acoustic signals. Both rule-based and machine learning models were employed to identify the moments where the nozzle was engaged with the substrate and diagnose the velocity. The results indicate that monitoring the spray velocity of the cold spray process using AAE is feasible.

The prognostic of the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of composite structures remains a critical challenge as it involves understanding complex degradation behaviors while it is emerging for maintaining the safety and reliability of aerospace structures. As damage accumulation is the primary degradation indicator from the structural integrity point of view, a methodology that enables monitoring the damage mechanisms contributing to the structure's failure may facilitate a reliable and effective RUL prognosis. Therefore, in this study, an integrated methodology has been introduced by targeting the RUL and progressive delamination state via Deep Neural Network (DNN) trained with Guided wave-based damage indicators (GW-DIs). These GW-DIs are obtained via signal processing, Hilbert transform, and Continuous Wavelet Transform. This work uses GW-DIs to train and test the proposed model within two frameworks: one focusing on individual sample analysis to explore path dependency in RUL and delamination prognosis and another on an ensembled dataset to propose a generic model across varying stress scenarios. Results from the study indicate that proposed DNN frameworks are capable of encapsulating fast and slow degradation scenarios to evaluate the RUL prediction with associated delamination progress, which could contribute to ensuring the integrity and longevity of critical life-safe structures.

Acousto-ultrasonic composite transducers (AUCTs), comprising piezoceramic materials in a reinforced polymeric matrix, show promise for structural health monitoring in composite structures. Challenges arise when integrating AUCTs onto highly loaded thermoplastic composites, especially low-surface-energy materials like polyaryletherketone composites. To address this, the study explores the viability of attaching AUCTs to low-melting polyaryletherketone carbon fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite structures using ultrasonic welding. This welding technique forms a joint where the interface material fuses with the AUCT embedment and the structure matrix, providing a reliable and automatable process. The investigation includes a comparative analysis of an ultrasonic welded joint with an external energy director and a reference AUCT system integrated using a vacuum bagging oven procedure. Results highlight the potential of AUCT configurations integrated by ultrasonic welding as an alternative solution, acknowledging challenges that persist for further development and increased reliability in structural health monitoring applications.

In this research, a generalized machine learning (ML) framework is proposed to estimate the fatigue life of epoxy polymers and additively manufactured AlSi10Mg alloy materials, leveraging their failure surface void characteristics. An extreme gradient boosting algorithm-based ML framework encompassing Synthetic Minority Over-sampling TEchnique (SMOTE), categorical data encoding, and external loop cross-validation is developed to evaluate the fatigue life across materials. The influence of different training strategies based on materials, input features, encoding method, and data standardization on the model performance is explored. Additionally, the importance of anti-data-leakage and anti-overfitting measures over the ML model performance is addressed. The result shows that the data-leakage-free, external loop cross-validated model can estimate the fatigue life of selective epoxy polymers and metal alloys with an average R² of 0.71 ± 0.06 using a mere 12 to 27 experimental data points per material category. Whereas the model trained with data-leakage and overfitting results in high R² of 0.9.

Fatigue damage prognosis always requires a degradation model describing the damage evolution with time; thus, the prognostic performance highly depends on the selection of such a model. The best model should probably be case specific, calling for the fusion of multiple degradation models for a robust prognosis. In this context, this paper proposes a scheme of online fusing multiple models in a particle filter (PF)-based damage prognosis framework. First, each prognostic model has its process equation built through a physics-based or data-driven degradation model and has its measurement equation linking the damage state and the measurement. Second, each model is independently processed through one PF to provide one group of particles. Then, the particles from all models are adopted for remaining useful life prediction. Finally, the particles from each PF are fused with those from all the other PFs to improve their particle diversity, and consequently, to provide better estimation and prognostic performance. The feasibility and robustness of the proposed method are validated by an experimental study, where an aluminum lug structure subject to fatigue crack growth is monitored by a guided wave measurement system.