Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
10690619 Ultrasonics 2005 15 Pages PDF
Abstract
Diffuse ultrasonic waves for structural health monitoring offer the advantages of simplicity of signal generation and reception, sensitivity to damage, and large area coverage; however, there are the serious disadvantages of no accepted methodology for analyzing the complex recorded signals and sensitivity to environmental changes such as temperature and surface conditions. Presented here is a methodology for applying diffuse ultrasonic waves to the problem of detecting structural damage in the presence of unmeasured temperature changes. This methodology is based upon the prediction and observation that the first order effect of a temperature change on a diffuse ultrasonic wave is a time dilation or compression. A multi-step procedure is implemented to (1) record a set of baseline waveforms from the undamaged specimen at temperatures spanning the expected operating range, (2) select a waveform from the baseline set whose temperature is the closest to that of a subsequently measured signal, (3) adjust this baseline waveform to best match the signal, and (4) calculate an error parameter between the signal and the adjusted waveform and compare this parameter to a threshold to determine the structural status. This procedure is applied to experimental data from aluminum plate specimens with artificial flaws. Probability of detection and the minimum flaw size detected are presented as a function of the size of the baseline waveform set. It is shown that a probability of detection of over 95% can be achieved with a small number of baseline waveforms.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Physics and Astronomy Acoustics and Ultrasonics
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