• 한국소음진동공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국소음진동공학회 2009년도 춘계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.258-259
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• 2009

Pipe wall thinning is one of severe problems on structural safety in nuclear power plants. A guided wave can be a proper tool for the fast evaluation or monitoring. As for gradual wall thinnings, however, low sensitivity caused by the low reflection coefficient limits the use of the guided wave. In this work, instead of the guided wave reflection at the wall thinning, the variation of dispersion characteristics is concerned. SH waves were employed due to several advantages and the magnetostrictive patch transducers were used for the excitation and sensing of the SH waves. The proposed method were verified with some experiments and showed the feasibility as an effective tool for the inspection of gradual wall thinning.

• 비파괴검사학회지
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• 제29권6호
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• pp.570-578
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• 2009

Excitation and propagation of guided waves are very complex problems in pipes due to their dispersive nature. Pipes are commonly used in the oil, chemical or nuclear industry and hence must be inspected regularly to ensure continued safe operation. The normal mode expansion(NME) method is given for the amplitude with which any propagating waveguide mode is generated in the pipes by applied surface tractions. Numerical results are calculated based on the NME method using different sources, i.e., non-axisymmetric partial loading and quasi-axisymmetric loading sources. The sum of amplitude coefficients for 0~nineth order of the harmonic modes are calculated based on the NME method and the dispersion curves in pipes. The superimposed total field which is namely the angular profile, varies with propagating distance and circumferential angle. This angular profile of guided waves provides information for setting the transducer position to find defects in pipes.

• 한국소음진동공학회논문집
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• 제21권3호
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• pp.227-233
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• 2011

The ultrasonic guided wave phased array using magnetostrictive patch transducers is proposed. The magnetostrictive transducer has received much attention because it is cost-effective and capable to generate ultrasonic waves with a simple configuration. However, it has not been used for ultrasonic guided wave phased array applications until now. In this paper, we propose a magnetostrictive transducer based phased array system consisting of a multi-channel function generator, power amplifiers and Lamb wave magnetostrictive transducers. To check the performance of the ultrasonic guided wave phased array, several Lamb wave focusing experiments were carried out in an aluminum plate. The results demonstrated the capability of the developed array to focus the Lamb waves at specific target points.

• 동력기계공학회지
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• 제18권5호
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• pp.100-105
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• 2014

It has been previously reported that in principle sludge and blockages can be detected and even characterized by using guided ultrasonic torsional waves, based on an idealized model in which the sludge layer was simplified in terms of geometry and material properties. The work revealed that the presence of a layer inside a pipe scatters the guided wave propagating in the pipe and both the reflection and transmission of the guided wave can be used to effectively detect and characterize the layer. This paper proceeds the work by taking into account more realistic sludge characteristics, including irregular circumferential profiles of the sludge layer and imperfect bonding state between the sludge and the pipe. The influence of these issues is investigated to identify the critical factors that influence the detection and characterization capability of the two measurements.

• 동력기계공학회지
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• 제18권3호
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• pp.29-35
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• 2014

A new method is presented that uses guided wave techniques for sludge and blockage detection in long-range pipelines. Existing techniques have the limitations that the sludge position needs to be known a priori and the area to be inspected needs to be accessible. A novel guided wave technique has been developed that allow the sludge or blockages to be detected remotely without the need to access the specific location where the pipe is blocked, nor to open the pipe. The technique measures the reflection of guided waves by sludge that can be used to accurately locate the blocked region. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is demonstrated and confirmed by experimental measurements.

• 대한용접접합학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한용접접합학회 2005년도 춘계학술발표대회 개요집
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• pp.194-196
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• 2005

Ultrasonic guided waves are gaining increasing attention for the inspection of platelike and rodlike structures. At the same time, inspection methods that do not require contact with the test piece are being developed for advanced applications. This paper capitalizes on recent advances in the areas of guided wave ultrasonics and noncontact ultrasonics to demonstrate a superior method for the nondestructive detection of thinning defects simulating hidden corrosion in thin aluminum plates. The proposed approach uses EMAT(electro-magnetic acoustic transducer) for the noncontact generation and detection of guided plate waves. Interesting features in the dispersive behavior of selected guided modes are used for the detection of plate thinning. It is shown that mode cutoff measurements provide a qualitative detection of thinning defects. Measurement of the mode group velocity can be also used to quantify of thinning depth.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제21권6호
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• pp.761-776
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• 2018

Guided wave testing is a reliable and safe method for pipeline inspection. In general, guided wave testing employs a circumferential array of piezoelectric transducers to clamp on the pipe circumference. The sensitivity of the operation depends on many factors, including transducer distribution across the circumferential array. This paper presents the sensitivity analysis of transducer array for the circumferential characteristics of guided waves in a pipe using finite element modelling and experimental studies. Various cases are investigated for the outputs of guided waves in the numerical simulations, including the number of transducers per array, transducer excitation variability and variations in transducer spacing. The effect of the dimensions of simulated notches in the pipe is also investigated for different arrangements of the transducer array. The results from the finite element numerical simulations are then compared with the related experimental results. Results show that the numerical outputs agree well with the experimental data, and the guided wave mode T(0,1) presents high sensitivity to the notch size in the circumferential direction, but low sensitivity to the notch size in the axial direction.

• 동력기계공학회지
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• 제14권5호
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• pp.36-40
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• 2010

The ultrasonic guided wave propagates along with the given structure's wall direction. Because of this specific character, the ultrasonic guided waves arc used in many other fields. Especially, it can be readily utilized for nondestructive inspection of various structures that are made up of gas pipes, heat exchanger tubes, and thin plates. Further, the guided wave technology can be readily utilized when inspecting pipes or thin plates which pose high risk of the accident but for which the nondestructive inspection itself is impossible because it is difficult to get to them since they are coated or buried underground. In the other hand, conventional ultrasonic testing such as thickness gauging uses bulk waves and only tests the region of structure immediately below the transducer. As a result of the application about inlet and outlet cooling water line using guided wave test, we conformed that the overall corrosions were in the lower side of the 304.8 mm inlet valve and these corrosions were engaged in not locally but through the lower side of the valve line. In the near future, we can expect that the detectable defect size is smaller than before along with the development of the sensing technology.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제6권7호
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• pp.835-849
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• 2010

This study investigated propagation characteristics of piezo-activated guided waves in an aluminium rectangular-section tube for the purpose of damage identification. Changes in propagating velocity and amplitude of the first wave packet in acquired signals were observed in the frequency range from 50 to 250 kHz. The difference in guided wave propagation between rectangular- and circular-section tubes was examined using finite element simulation, demonstrating a great challenge in interpretation of guided wave signals in rectangular-section tubes. An active sensor network, consisting of nine PZT elements bonded on different surfaces of the tube, was configured to collect the wave signals scattered from through-thickness holes of different diameters. It was found that guided waves were capable of propagating across the sharp tube curvatures while retaining sensitivity to damage, even that not located on the surfaces where actuators/sensors were attached. Signal correlation between the intact and damaged structures was evaluated with the assistance of a concept of digital damage fingerprints (DDFs). The probability of the presence of damage on the unfolded tube surface was thus obtained, by which means the position of damage was identified with good accuracy.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제13권4호
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• pp.587-614
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• 2014

In recent years the interest in online monitoring of lightweight structures with ultrasonic guided waves is steadily growing. Especially the aircraft industry is a driving force in the development of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. In order to optimally design SHM systems powerful and efficient numerical simulation tools to predict the behaviour of ultrasonic elastic waves in thin-walled structures are required. It has been shown that in real industrial applications, such as airplane wings or fuselages, conventional linear and quadratic pure displacement finite elements commonly used to model ultrasonic elastic waves quickly reach their limits. The required mesh density, to obtain good quality solutions, results in enormous computational costs when solving the wave propagation problem in the time domain. To resolve this problem different possibilities are available. Analytical methods and higher order finite element method approaches (HO-FEM), like p-FEM, spectral elements, spectral analysis and isogeometric analysis, are among them. Although analytical approaches offer fast and accurate results, they are limited to rather simple geometries. On the other hand, the application of higher order finite element schemes is a computationally demanding task. The drawbacks of both methods can be circumvented if regions of complex geometry are modelled using a HO-FEM approach while the response of the remaining structure is computed utilizing an analytical approach. The objective of the paper is to present an efficient method to couple different HO-FEM schemes with an analytical description of an undisturbed region. Using this hybrid formulation the numerical effort can be drastically reduced. The functionality of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by studying the propagation of ultrasonic guided waves in plates, excited by a piezoelectric patch actuator. The actuator is modelled utilizing higher order coupled field finite elements, whereas the homogenous, isotropic plate is described analytically. The results of this "semi-analytical" approach highlight the opportunities to reduce the numerical effort if closed-form solutions are partially available.