A Digital Twin-Driven Dual-Stage Adversarial Transfer Learning Method for Lamb Wave-Based Structural Damage Localization Under Limited Sensing Data

Abstract

Structural health monitoring (SHM) based on Lamb waves relies on sensors to acquire structural response signals. However, sensor data acquisition is severely constrained under complex damage conditions. Digital twins (DTs) can enhance damage monitoring capabilities in Lamb wave SHM by integrating simulation and experimental sensor data. Nevertheless, performance remains limited by discrepancies in signal distribution between digital and physical domains, as well as cross-domain optimization conflicts. This study proposes a digital twin-driven dual-stage adversarial and transfer learning method with multi-objective optimization (DT-DSATMO) for Lamb wave-based structural damage localization under limited sensing conditions. Firstly, a strategy for hierarchical feature enhancement and conditional generation incorporating physical prior knowledge is introduced to construct distribution-consistent feature representations in the digital domain. Secondly, it achieves adaptive alignment between the two domains via a lightweight domain adversarial transfer network, improving cross-domain feature transferability. Furthermore, a Pareto frontier-based multi-objective optimization strategy is employed to balance damage localization accuracy, cross-domain robustness, and feature consistency. The proposed method is experimentally validated on a representative aircraft wing-box panel equipped with four lead zirconate titanate (PZT) sensors. The case study results show that it substantially enhances damage localization accuracy and cross-domain generalization under limited sensing data.

Keywords: damage localization; digital twin; dual-stage adversarial and transfer learning; limited sensing data; multi-objective optimization.