No abstract

A numerical method for damage identification in brittle materials is presented. The method is based on the time of arrival of the elastic wave, generated by the damage formation, to a group of sensors positioned on the boundary of a material sample. The equations of motion for the elastic waves are the starting point, including a body force term which accounts for the sudden formation of a crack. Then a discretization scheme for the 2D equations of elasticity is developed, which allows to obtained a suitable numerical model. Some numerical experiments are performed, to assess the validity of the method, reproducing the readings of some sensor positioned on the boundary of the sample. The location of the damage and the time of formation are identified by an appropriate nonlinear least square problem.