Laser ultrasonic scanning, especially full-field wave propagation imaging, is attractive for damage detection due to its noncontact nature, sensitivity to local damage, and high spatial resolution. However, its practicality is limited because scanning at a high spatial resolution demands a prohibitively long scanning time. Inspired by binary search, an accelerated laser scanning technique is developed to localize and visualize damage with reduced scanning points and scanning time. The distance between the excitation point and the sensing point during scanning is fixed in this technique to maintain a high signal-to-noise ratio for measured ultrasonic responses. First, the approximate damage boundary is identified by examining the interactions between the ultrasonic waves and damage at the sparse scanning points that are selected by the binary search algorithm. Here, a time-domain laser ultrasonic response is transformed into a spatial ultrasonic domain using a basis pursuit approach so that the interactions between the ultrasonic waves and damage, such as reflections and transmissions, can be better identified in the spatial ultrasonic domain. Then, the region inside the identified damage boundary is visualized as damage. The performance of the proposed accelerated laser scanning technique is validated through the experiment performed on an aluminum plate with a crack. The number of scanning points that is necessary for damage localization and visualization is dramatically reduced from N·M to 4log2N· log2M even for the worst case scenario. N and M represent the number of equally spaced scanning points in the x and y directions, respectively, which are required to obtain full-field wave propagation images of the target inspection region.
Rotating shafts in drop lifts of manufacturing facilities are susceptible to fatigue cracks as they are under repetitive heavy loading and high speed spins. However, it is challenging to use conventional contact transducers to monitor these shafts as they are continuously spinning with a high speed. In this study, a noncontact crack detection technique for a rotating shaft is proposed using air-coupled transducers (ACTs). (1) Low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) sinusoidal inputs are simultaneously applied to a shaft using two ACTs, respectively. A fatigue crack can provide a mechanism for nonlinear ultrasonic modulation and create spectral sidebands at the modulation frequencies, which are the sum and difference of the two input frequencies Then LF and HF inputs are independently applied to the shaft using each ACT. These three ultrasonic responses are measured using another ACT. (2) The damage index (DI) is defined as the energy of the first sideband components, which corresponding to the frequency sum and difference between HF and LF inputs. (3) Steps 1 and 2 are repeated with various combinations of HF and LF inputs. Crack existence is detected through an outlier analysis of the DIs. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is investigated using a steel shaft with a real fatigue crack.
This paper presents a fatigue crack detection technique based on visualization of nonlinear ultrasonic wave modulation produced by a fatigue crack. When distinctive low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) inputs are generated and applied to a structure, the presence of a fatigue crack can provide a mechanism for nonlinear ultrasonic modulation and create spectral sidebands around the frequency of the HF signal. In this study, the two input signals are created by two air-coupled transducers (ACT), and the corresponding ultrasonic responses are scanned over a target specimen using a 3D laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV). The crack-induced spectral sidebands are isolated using a combination of linear response subtraction (LRS), and continuous wavelet transform (CWT) filtering. Then, the extracted spectral sideband components are visualized near the fatigue crack. The effectiveness of the proposed non-contact scanning technique is tested using an aluminum plate with a real fatigue crack.
Although there are many laser ultrasonic imaging techniques developed so far, it still remains challenging to create such
images from a rotating object. In this study, an advanced laser ultrasonic imaging technique is developed so that
wavefield images can be constructed from a rotating blade using an embedded piezoelectric sensor and a scanning
excitation laser system. Here, the biggest challenge is to precisely estimate and control the exact excitation point when
the wind blade is rotating with additional ambient vibration and having complex shapes. In this study, the laser excitation
point is precisely estimated by computing the correlation values between the measured response signal and the ones in
the training data sets. First, training ultrasonic signals are measured at the fixed sensing point by scanning the excitation
laser over the target surface of the blade when the blade is in a stationary condition. Once the training is complete, an
ultrasonic signal is generated for the rotating blade using the excitation laser and measured by the sensor. The correlation
between the measured response and a training response is maximized when they correspond to the same excitation point.
Finally, ultrasonic images are generated by scanning the excitation laser over the target surface of the blade. The
effectiveness of the proposed imaging technique is investigated through experimental tests performed on a rotating blade
specimen.
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