scholarly journals Ultrasonic Guided Wave Testing on Cross-Ply Composite Laminate: An Empirical Study

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (18) ◽  
pp. 5291
Author(s):  
Gerardo Aranguren ◽  
Josu Etxaniz ◽  
Sergio Cantero-Chinchilla ◽  
Jose M. Gil-Garcia ◽  
Muhammad Khalid Malik
Keyword(s):  
Composite Structures ◽  
Composite Laminate ◽  
Guided Waves ◽  
Layered Composite ◽  
Guided Wave ◽  
High Signal ◽  
Active Sensors ◽  
Ultrasonic Guided Wave ◽  
Nominal Voltage ◽  
The Waves

Structural health monitoring comprises a set of techniques to detect defects appearing in structures. One of the most viable techniques is based on the guided ultrasonic wave test (UGWT), which consists of emitting waves throughout the structure, acquiring the emitted waves with various sensors, and processing the waves to detect changes in the structure. The UGWT of layered composite structures is challenging due to the anisotropic wave propagation characteristics of such structures and to the high signal attenuation that the waves experience. Hence, very low amplitude signals that are hard to distinguish from noise are typically recovered. This paper analyzes the propagation of guided waves along a cross-ply composite laminate following an empirical methodology. The research compares several implementations for UGWT with piezoelectric wafer active sensors. The reference for comparison is set on a basic mode, which considers the application of nominal voltage to a single sensor. The attenuation and spreading of the waves in several directions are compared when more energy is applied to the monitored structure. In addition, delayed multiple emission is also considered in multisensor tests. The goal of all the UGWT configurations is to transmit more energy to the structure such that the echoes of the emission are of greater amplitude and they ease the signal processing. The study is focused on the realization of viable monitoring systems for aeronautical composite made structures.

scholarly journals Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors for Structural Health Monitoring of Composite Structures Using Tuned Guided Waves

2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Giurgiutiu
Keyword(s):  
Structural Health Monitoring ◽  
Health Monitoring ◽  
Composite Structures ◽  
Guided Waves ◽  
Guided Wave ◽  
Impedance Method ◽  
Active Sensors ◽  
Structural Health ◽  
Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensors ◽  
Piezoelectric Wafer

Piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) are lightweight and inexpensive transducers that enable a large class of structural health monitoring (SHM) applications such as: (a) embedded guided wave ultrasonics, i.e., pitch-catch, pulse-echo, phased arrays; (b) high-frequency modal sensing, i.e., the electro-mechanical (E/M) impedance method; and (c) passive detection (acoustic emission and impact detection). The focus of this paper is on the challenges posed by using PWAS transducers in the composite structures as different from the metallic structures on which this methodology was initially developed. After a brief introduction, the paper reviews the PWAS-based SHM principles. It follows with a discussion of guided wave propagation in composites and PWAS tuning effects. Then, it discusses damage modes in composites. Finally, the paper presents some experimental results with damage detection in composite specimens. Hole damage and impact damage were detected using pitch-catch method with tuned guided waves being sent between a transmitter PWAS and a received PWAS. Root mean square deviation (RMSD) damage index (DI) were shown to correlate well with hole size and impact intensity. The paper ends with summary and conclusion; suggestions for further work are also presented.

scholarly journals An Empirical Study on Transmission Beamforming for Ultrasonic Guided-Wave Based Structural Health Monitoring

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 1445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Cantero-Chinchilla ◽  
Gerardo Aranguren ◽  
Muhammad Khalid Malik ◽  
Josu Etxaniz ◽  
Federico Martín de la Escalera
Keyword(s):  
Structural Health Monitoring ◽  
Health Monitoring ◽  
Guided Waves ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Guided Wave ◽  
High Signal ◽  
Efficient Operation ◽  
Structural Health ◽  
Thin Walled Structures ◽  
Ultrasonic Guided Wave

The development of reliable structural health monitoring techniques is enabling a healthy transition from preventive to condition-based maintenance, hence leading to safer and more efficient operation of different industries. Ultrasonic guided-wave based beamforming is one of the most promising techniques, which supports the monitoring of large thin-walled structures. However, beamforming has been typically applied to the post-processing stage (also known as virtual or receiver beamforming) because transmission or physical beamforming requires complex hardware configurations. This paper introduces an electronic structural health monitoring system that carries out transmission beamforming experiments by simultaneously emitting and receiving ultrasonic guided-waves using several transducers. An empirical characterization of the transmission beamforming technique for monitoring an aluminum plate is provided in this work. The high signal-to-noise ratio and accurate angular precision of the physical signal obtained in the experiments suggest that transmission beamforming can increase the reliability and robustnessof this monitoring technique for large structures and in real-world noisy environments.

scholarly journals Ultrasonic Guided Waves in Piezoelectric Layered Composite with Different Interfacial Properties

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao Chen
Keyword(s):  
Guided Waves ◽  
Interfacial Properties ◽  
Layered Composite ◽  
Guided Wave ◽  
Propagation Model ◽  
Ultrasonic Guided Waves ◽  
Piezoelectric Composite ◽  
Order Mode ◽  
Ultrasonic Guided Wave ◽  
Different Depths

Combining the propagation model of guided waves in a multilayered piezoelectric composite with the interfacial model of rigid, slip, and weak interfaces, the generalized dispersion characteristic equations of guided waves propagating in a piezoelectric layered composite with different interfacial properties are derived. The effects of the slip, weak, and delamination interfaces in different depths on the dispersion properties of the lowest-order mode ultrasonic guided wave are analyzed. The theory would be used to characterize the interfacial properties of piezoelectric layered composite nondestructively.

Ultrasonic unilateral double-position excitation lamb wave defect detection and quantification method for ground electrode of transmission tower

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Kuan Ye ◽  
Kai Zhou ◽  
Ren Zhigang ◽  
Ruizhe Zhang ◽  
Chunsheng Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Guided Waves ◽  
Power Transmission ◽  
Geometric Model ◽  
Guided Wave ◽  
Quantization Error ◽  
Dispersion Function ◽  
Stable Operation ◽  
Transmission Tower ◽  
Ultrasonic Guided Wave ◽  
Transmission Towers

The power transmission tower’s ground electrode defect will affect its normal current dispersion function and threaten the power system’s safe and stable operation and even personal safety. Aiming at the problem that the buried grounding grid is difficult to be detected, this paper proposes a method for identifying the ground electrode defects of transmission towers based on single-side multi-point excited ultrasonic guided waves. The geometric model, ultrasonic excitation model, and physical model are established, and the feasibility of ultrasonic guided wave detection is verified through the simulation and experiment. In actual inspection, it is equally important to determine the specific location of the defect. Therefore, a multi-point excitation method is proposed to determine the defect’s actual position by combining the ultrasonic guided wave signals at different excitation positions. Besides, the precise quantification of flat steel grounding electrode defects is achieved through the feature extraction-neural network method. Field test results show that, compared with the commercial double-sided excitation transducer, the single-sided excitation transducer proposed in this paper has a lower defect quantization error in defect quantification. The average quantization error is reduced by approximately 76%.

scholarly journals Rail Diagnostics Based on Ultrasonic Guided Waves: An Overview

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 1071
Author(s):  
Davide Bombarda ◽  
Giorgio Matteo Vitetta ◽  
Giovanni Ferrante
Keyword(s):  
Guided Waves ◽  
Structural Integrity ◽  
Diagnostic Procedures ◽  
Guided Wave ◽  
Rolling Stock ◽  
Technical Literature ◽  
Track Maintenance ◽  
Rail Network ◽  
Ultrasonic Guided Wave ◽  
Maintenance And Inspection

Rail tracks undergo massive stresses that can affect their structural integrity and produce rail breakage. The last phenomenon represents a serious concern for railway management authorities, since it may cause derailments and, consequently, losses of rolling stock material and lives. Therefore, the activities of track maintenance and inspection are of paramount importance. In recent years, the use of various technologies for monitoring rails and the detection of their defects has been investigated; however, despite the important progresses in this field, substantial research efforts are still required to achieve higher scanning speeds and improve the reliability of diagnostic procedures. It is expected that, in the near future, an important role in track maintenance and inspection will be played by the ultrasonic guided wave technology. In this manuscript, its use in rail track monitoring is investigated in detail; moreover, both of the main strategies investigated in the technical literature are taken into consideration. The first strategy consists of the installation of the monitoring instrumentation on board a moving test vehicle that scans the track below while running. The second strategy, instead, is based on distributing the instrumentation throughout the entire rail network, so that continuous monitoring in quasi-real-time can be obtained. In our analysis of the proposed solutions, the prototypes and the employed methods are described.

Storage Tank Floor and Wall Defect In-Situ Inspection With Ultrasonic Guided Wave Technique

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhanjun Feng ◽  
Weibin Wang ◽  
Wenqiang Tong ◽  
Keyi Yuan ◽  
Zandong Han ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Storage Tank ◽  
Guided Waves ◽  
Ultrasonic Signal ◽  
Guided Wave ◽  
Tank Wall ◽  
Transmission Tomography ◽  
Wall Defect ◽  
Oil Storage ◽  
Ultrasonic Guided Wave

Large storage tanks for oil storage are widely used in petrochemical industry. Corrosion in the tank floor and wall is a serious threat for environmental and economic safety. Owing to their unique potential for long-range, in-plane propagation through plates, Ultrasonic Guided Waves (UGW) offer an obvious solution in the development of an on-board structural health-monitoring (SHM) system, providing assessment of structural integrity for storage tank floor and wall defect in-situ inspection. This paper presents this application by focusing on their propagation through the plate structure. Even very small mechanical discontinuity or geometry change of plate structure, e.g. corrosion defect on tank floor, will influence the propagation characteristic of the guided waves. These effects are measured as mode changes, frequency shifts or filtering, reflection and diffraction of new ultrasonic modes or overall distortion of the original ultrasonic signals. By capturing and analyzing these changes we can deduct the corrosion defect of the tank floor and wall which causes the ultrasonic signal change and interactions. The T/R transducers are required to be attached on the outer edge of the tank floor and outer surface of the tank wall. The technique is developed based on the Lamb wave transmission tomography. Starting from the dispersion curve and choosing the appropriate wave mode, the propagation of the guided waves in the tank floor and wall has been carried out through numerical simulation and the experiment has been conducted for verification using the full-size oil storage tank. The low frequency guided waves can propagate longer distance in planar and tubular structures. The later has been already used in pipeline inspection. The complexity of the application of ultrasonic guided wave in tank floor inspection lies in the object containing multiple lap joint welds along the large diameter of the tank (up to 100 m) and the complicated reconstruction of the two-dimensional defect distribution information. The main scope of the investigation was the application of the ultrasonic transmission tomography for localization of non-uniformities of inside tank floor, taking into account ultrasonic signal losses due to the loading with oil on the top and ground support at the bottom for the tank floor, and the loading with oil inside for the vertical tank wall.

scholarly journals Numerical Simulation on Micro-damage Detection In CFRP Composites Based on Nonlinear Ultrasonic Guided Waves

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Damage Detection ◽  
Composite Structures ◽  
Guided Waves ◽  
Second Harmonic ◽  
Wave Mode ◽  
Guided Wave ◽  
Reinforced Plastics ◽  
Matrix Cracks ◽  
Nonlinear Ultrasonic ◽  
Contact Acoustic Nonlinearity

Abstract. Micro-damages such as pores, closed delamination/debonding and fiber/matrix cracks in carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) are vital factors towards the performance of composite structures, which could collapse if defects are not detected in advance. Nonlinear ultrasonic technologies, especially ones involving guided waves, have drawn increasing attention for their better sensitivity to early damages than linear acoustic ones. The combination of nonlinear acoustics and guided waves technique can promisingly provide considerable accuracy and efficiency for damage assessment and materials characterization. Herein, numerical simulations in terms of finite element method are conducted to investigate the feasibility of micro-damage detection in multi-layered CFRP plates using the second harmonic generation (SHG) of asymmetric Lamb guided wave mode. Contact acoustic nonlinearity (CAN) is introduced into the constitutive model of micro-damages in composites, which leads to the distinct SHG compared with material nonlinearity. The results suggest that the generated second order harmonics due to CAN could be received and adopted for early damage evaluation without matching the phase of the primary waves.

Design and Evaluation of Automated Robotic Ultrasonic Guided Wave Based Inspection System

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott M. Bland ◽  
Shiv P. Joshi
Keyword(s):  
Composite Structures ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Current System ◽  
Ultrasonic Inspection ◽  
Guided Wave ◽  
Inspection System ◽  
Sensitivity Testing ◽  
Advanced Composite ◽  
Ultrasonic Guided Wave ◽  
Sandwich Materials

This paper discusses the development and testing of an automated robotic ultrasonic guided wave based inspection system developed to provide an efficient, accurate and reliable method for performing nondestructive evaluation and longer term structural health monitoring in advanced composite structures. The development process and challenges in the design of the automated robotic system are described. A number of tests were performed using the developed robotic ultrasonic inspection system on composite honeycomb core sandwich materials. Experiments showed that the developed automated ultrasonic guided wave inspection system was successful at locating disbonds between the core and the facesheets. Environmental sensitivity testing was also performed to characterize the effect of changing temperature and humidity on system performance. These tests indicate that approach was relatively insensitive to environmental changes, so that this approach could be used in service environment without a significant reduction in performance. Current system testing indicates that the described robotic ultrasonic inspection approach offers an accurate and robust method for inspection and long term tracking of advanced structural system health.

scholarly journals Development of Ultrasonic Guided Wave Transducer for Monitoring of High Temperature Pipelines

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (24) ◽  
pp. 5443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anurag Dhutti ◽  
Saiful Asmin Tumin ◽  
Wamadeva Balachandran ◽  
Jamil Kanfoud ◽  
Tat-Hean Gan
Keyword(s):  
High Temperature ◽  
Guided Waves ◽  
Elevated Temperatures ◽  
Element Model ◽  
Wave Mode ◽  
Guided Wave ◽  
Electromechanical Impedance ◽  
Active Sensor ◽  
Ultrasonic Guided Wave ◽  
Modes Of Vibration

High-temperature (HT) ultrasonic transducers are of increasing interest for structural health monitoring (SHM) of structures operating in harsh environments. This article focuses on the development of an HT piezoelectric wafer active sensor (HT-PWAS) for SHM of HT pipelines using ultrasonic guided waves. The PWAS was fabricated using Y-cut gallium phosphate (GaPO4) to produce a torsional guided wave mode on pipes operating at temperatures up to 600 °C. A number of confidence-building tests on the PWAS were carried out. HT electromechanical impedance (EMI) spectroscopy was performed to characterise piezoelectric properties at elevated temperatures and over long periods of time (>1000 h). Laser Doppler vibrometry (LDV) was used to verify the modes of vibration. A finite element model of GaPO4 PWAS was developed to model the electromechanical behaviour of the PWAS and the effect of increasing temperatures, and it was validated using EMI and LDV experimental data. This study demonstrates the application of GaPO4 for guided-wave SHM of pipelines and presents a model that can be used to evaluate different transducer designs for HT applications.

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