• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.371-382
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• 2017

Concrete filled steel tubes are extensively applied in engineering structures due to their resistance to high tensile and compressive load and convenience in construction. But one major flaw, their vulnerability to environmental attack, can severely reduce the strength and life of these structures. Degradation due to corrosion of steel confining the concrete is one of the major durability problems faced by civil engineers to maintain these structures. The problem accelerates as inner surface of steel tube is in contact with concrete which serves as electrolyte. If it remains unnoticed, it further accelerates and can be catastrophic. This paper discusses a non-destructive degradation monitoring technique for early detection corrosion in steel tubes in CFST members. Due to corrosion, damage in the form of debonding and pitting occurs in steel sections. Guided ultrasonic waves have been used as a feasible and attractive solution for the detection and monitoring of corrosion damages in CFST sections. Guided waves have been utilized to monitor the effect of notch and debond defects in concrete filled steel tubes simulating pitting and delamination of steel tubes from surrounding concrete caused by corrosion. Pulse transmission has been used to monitor the healthy and simulated damaged specimens. A methodology is developed and successfully applied for the monitoring of concrete filled steel tubular sections undergoing accelerated chloride corrosion. The ultrasonic signals efficiently narrate the state of steel tube undergoing corrosion.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2005.06a
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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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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.471-484
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• 2016

Optical fiber sensors have been proven that they have the potential to detect high-frequency ultrasonic signals, in structural health monitoring field which generally refers to acoustic emission signals from active structural damages and guided waves excited by ultrasonic actuators and propagating in waveguide. In this work, the sensing properties of optical fiber sensors based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer were investigated in the metal plate. Analytical formulas were conducted first to explore the parameters affecting its sensing performances. Due to the simple and definable frequency component, the Lamb wave excited by the piezoelectric wafer was employed to study the sensitivity of the proposed optical fiber sensors with respect to the frequency, rather than the acoustic emission signals. In the experiments, according to above investigations, spiral shape optical fiber sensors with different size were selected to increase their sensitivity. Lamb waves were excited by a circular piezoelectric wafer, while another piezoelectric wafer was used to compare their voltage responses. Furthermore, by changing the excitation frequency, the tuning frequency characteristic of the proposed optical fiber sensor was also investigated experimentally.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.29 no.6
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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.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.174-178
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• 2015

This paper describes a signal processing technique for identifying signals from defects by using an electromagnetic-ultrasonic guided waves method based on a magnetostrictive sensor that generates a torsional mode (T(0, 1)). Because this technique is based on the digital filtering, the filtered signals provide information on the relationship between the cutoff frequency of band-pass filter and the characteristic of defect signals in heat exchange tubes. To verify the performance of the technique, artificial defects with various thickness reduction ration and shape were machined in titanium tubes, and digital filtering results are reported. The results show that digital filtering provides information to the identify shape of defects and the contact condition between the tube and support ring. Therefore, the proposed technique has good potential as a tool for evaluating the integrity of heat exchange tubes.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.215-232
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• 2016

This paper presents a multi helical ultrasonic imaging approach for quantitative corrosion damage monitoring of cylindrical structures. The approach consists of two stages. First a multi helical ultrasonic imaging (MHUI) algorithm is used to provide qualitative images of the structure of interest. Then, an optimization problem is solved in order to obtain quantitative damage information, such as thickness map. Experimental tests are carried out on a steel pipe instrumented with six piezoelectric transducers to validate the proposed approach. Three thickness recesses are considered to simulate corrosion damage. The results show the efficiency of the proposed approach for quantifying corrosion location, area and remnant thickness.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.446-460
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• 2001

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.11-18
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• 2011

Ultrasonic guided waves have been widely utilized for long range inspection of structures. Recently, many researchers have paid attention to the tomographic imaging using guided wave for the diagnosis of plate-like structures because group velocity of guided waves is changed by central frequency of transducer and thickness of plate. Currently, Delay and Sum imaging technique and MVDR(Minimum Variance Distortionless Response) imaging technique are performed. So the performance of these two imaging techniques are investigated in this paper.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.349-362
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• 2010

Ultrasonic Guided Waves (UGWs) are a useful tool in structural health monitoring (SHM) applications that can benefit from built-in transduction, moderately large inspection ranges and high sensitivity to small flaws. This paper describes a SHM method based on UGWs, discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and principal component analysis (PCA) able to detect and quantify the onset and propagation of fatigue cracks in structural waveguides. The method combines the advantages of guided wave signals processed through the DWT with the outcomes of selecting defect-sensitive features to perform a multivariate diagnosis of damage. This diagnosis is based on the PCA. The framework presented in this paper is applied to the detection of fatigue cracks in a steel beam. The probing hardware consists of a PXI platform that controls the generation and measurement of the ultrasonic signals by means of piezoelectric transducers made of Lead Zirconate Titanate. Although the approach is demonstrated in a beam test, it is argued that the proposed method is general and applicable to any structure that can sustain the propagation of UGWs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2012.10a
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• pp.611-612
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• 2012