Configuration study of an acoustic wave sensor on a continuous elastic support

This paper has exploited a new acoustic sensor method for determining moving acoustic wave loads from the structural responses through an inverse process. This new method is completely different from the principle of conventional acoustic wave sensors which use certain piezoelectric materials to generate the acoustic wave. Specifically, a beam structure with elastic foundation supports acting as a sensor configuration is studied. The time-domain response of an Euler–Bernoulli beam supported by an elastic foundation and excited by a traveling sinusoidal excitation is obtained based on an assumed basis function approach and by the finite element method. Moving wave loads are well identified in the time domain through an inverse process with the help of the Tikhonov regularization technique to solve ill-conditioned problems. To evaluate the method and examine various configurations, various levels of random noise are added to the simulated displacements and velocities to study the effect of noise in moving wave load identification. In addition, some of the configuration parameters of interest include the beam material, geometry, and thickness, and the elastic foundation properties. Results obtained from the simulations show that this sensor configuration can be effective in identifying moving wave loads. (paper)