• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.301-310
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• 2020

The laser ultrasonic technique is gaining popularity for nondestructive evaluation (NDE) applications because it is a noncontact and couplant-free method and can inspect a target from a remote distance. For the conventional laser ultrasonic techniques, a pulsed laser is often used to generate broadband ultrasonic waves in a target structure. However, for crack detection using nonlinear ultrasonic modulation, it is necessary to generate narrowband ultrasonic waves. In this study, a pulsed laser is shaped into dual-line arrays using a spatial mask and used to simultaneously excite narrowband ultrasonic waves in the target structure at two distinct frequencies. Nonlinear ultrasonic modulation will occur between the two input frequencies when they encounter a fatigue crack existing in the target structure. Then, a nonlinear damage index (DI) is defined as a function of the magnitude of the modulation components and computed over the target structure by taking advantage of laser scanning. Finally, the fatigue crack is detected and localized by visualizing the nonlinear DI over the target structure. Numerical simulations and experimental tests are performed to examine the possibility of generating narrowband ultrasonic waves using the spatial mask. The performance of the proposed fatigue crack localization technique is validated by conducting an experiment with aluminum plates containing real fatigue cracks.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.621-625
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• 2020

Cast austenitic stainless steel (CASS) is used for fabricating different components of the primary reactor coolant system of pressurized water reactors. However, the thermal embrittlement of CASS resulting from long-term operation causes structural safety problems. Ultrasonic testing for flaw detection has been used to assess the thermal embrittlement of CASS; however, the high scattering and attenuation of the ultrasonic wave propagating through CASS make it difficult to accurately quantify the flaw size. In this paper, we present a different approach for evaluating the thermal embrittlement of CASS by assessing changes in the material properties of CASS using a nonlinear ultrasonic technique, which is a potential nondestructive method. For the evaluation, we prepared CF8M specimens that were thermally aged under four different heating conditions. Nonlinear ultrasonic measurements were performed using a contact piezoelectric method to obtain the relative ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter, and a mini-sized tensile test was performed to investigate the correlation of the parameter with material properties. Experimental results showed that the ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter had a correlation with tensile properties such as the tensile strength and elongation. Consequently, we could confirm the applicability of the nonlinear ultrasonic technique to the evaluation of the thermal embrittlement of CASS.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.345-351
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• 2010

The oblique incidence technique for ultrasonic nonlinear characterization was studied in stainless steel 316L alloy subjected to high cycle fatigue. A dog-bone plate specimen was prepared to make different faitgue-driven deformation at each position where the stress concentration could occur in the middle of specimen. In addition to the normal transmission technique, the oblique incidence technique which is newly suggested in this study, was used to measure ultrasonic nonlinear parameter. The fatigued specimen shows higher ultrasonic nonlinear parameter than the virgin specimen for both techniques. Ultrasonic nonlinear parameter highly increases in the middle of test specimen where the stress concentration existes. Relative nonlinear parameter has strong correlation with fatigue damage. Consequently, the oblique incidence technique with longitudinal wave can be potential to characterize high cycle fatigue damage.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.651-658
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• 2012

This paper concentrates on the evaluation of microcracks in thermal damaged concrete on the basis of the nonlinear ultrasonic modulation technique. Since concrete structure exposed to high temperature accompanies the development of microcracks due to the physical and chemical changes from temperature and exposed time, the adoption of nonlinear approach is required. Instead of using the conventional ultrasonic nondestructive methods which have the limitation in evaluating excessive microcracks, accordingly, a nonlinear ultrasonic modulation method which shows better sensitivity in quantifying microcracks is introduced. Upon the analysis for the modulation of ultrasonic wave and low frequency impact to measure the nonlinearity parameter, which can be used as an indicator of thermal damage, the verification processes for the introduced technique are followed: SEM investigation and permeable pore space test are performed to characterize thermally induced microcracks in concrete, and ultrasonic pulse velocity tests are performed to confirm the outstanding sensitivity of nonlinear ultrasonic modulation technique. In advance, compressive strength of thermal damaged concrete is measured to represent the effect of microcracks on performance degradation. Correlation studies between experimental data and measured data show that nonlinear ultrasonic modulation technique can effectively be used to quantify thermally induced microcracks, and to estimate the compressive strength of thermally damaged concrete.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2013

Ultrasonic guided wave techniques have been widely used for long range nondestructive detection in tube-like structures. The present paper investigates the ultrasonic linear and nonlinear parameters for evaluating the thermal damage in aluminum pipe. Specimens were subjected to thermal loading. Flexible polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) comb transducers were used to generate and receive the ultrasonic waves. The second harmonic wave generation technique was used to check the material nonlinearity change after different heat loadings. The conventional linear ultrasonic approach based on attenuation was also used to evaluate the thermal damages in specimens. The results show that the proposed experimental setup is viable to assess the thermal damage in an aluminum pipe. The ultrasonic nonlinear parameter is a promising candidate for the prediction of micro-damages in a tube-like structure.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.121-129
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• 2016

As the lifespan of concrete structures increases, their load carrying capacity decreases owing to cyclic loads and long-term effects such as creep and shrinkage. For these reasons, there is a necessity for stress state monitoring of concrete members. Particularly, it is necessary to evaluate the concrete structures for behavioral changes by using a technique that can overcome the measuring limitations of usual ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation methods. This paper proposes the use of a nonlinear ultrasonic method, namely, nonlinear resonant ultrasonic spectroscopy (NRUS) for the measurement of nonlinearity parameters for stress monitoring. An experiment compared the use of NRUS method and a linear ultrasonic method, namely, ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) to study the effects of continuously increasing loads and cyclic loads on the nonlinearity parameter. Both NRUS and UPV methods found a similar direct relationship between load level and that parameter. The NRUS method showed a higher sensitivity to micro-structural changes of concrete than UPV method. Thus, the experiment confirms the possibility of using the nonlinear ultrasonic method for stress state monitoring of concrete members.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.564-572
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• 2012

Harmonic imaging is introduced in the present article and its principle and physical characteristics is described in contrast to conventional ultrasonic imaging. The principle of the conventional image which uses ultrasonic echoes reflected at the interfaces between tissues is presented, and the nonlinear ultrasonic propagation which results in harmonic components is conceptually described. The pulse inversion technique which effectively extracts the harmonic components from the ultrasonic echo signals is introduced, and the advantages of the constructed harmonic images are summarized comparing with those of conventional ultrasonic images. The harmonic images are classified according to the mechanism of harmonic production, and the typical harmonic images obtained from patients are presented in contrast to the corresponding sonograms. Clinical significance and prospects of harmonic imaging and the future research areas are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.115-121
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• 2017

The nonlinear ultrasonic technique is a potential nondestructive method to evaluate material degradation, in which the ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter is usually measured. The ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter is defined by the elastic nonlinearity coefficients of the nonlinear Hooke's equation. Therefore, even though the ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter is not equal to the elastic nonlinearity parameter, they have a close relationship. However, there has been no experimental verification of the relationship between the ultrasonic and elastic nonlinearity parameters. In this study, the relationship is experimentally verified for a heat-treated aluminum alloy. Specimens of the aluminum alloy were heat-treated at $300^{\circ}C$ for different periods of time (0, 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 h). The relative ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter of each specimen was then measured, and the elastic nonlinearity parameter was determined by fitting the stress-strain curve obtained from a tensile test to the 5th-order-polynomial nonlinear Hooke's equation. The results showed that the variations in these parameters were in good agreement with each other.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.215-222
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• 2017

In order to evaluate a stress state of concrete according to the change of tensile force of prestressed beam, improved nonlinear resonant ultrasonic spectroscopy(NRUS) method is proposed. This technique is advantageous to evaluate the stress state in initial state because the method shows much higher sensitivity than existing linear ultrasonic methods. The NRUS technique measure a nonlinearity parameter, which is calculated from the resonant frequency shift of ultrasonic wave related to the medium state, and the result is also closely related to the stress state of concrete. In this study, the nonlinearity parameter was measured with the change of tensile force to verify the close relationship between the two factors, and the effect of repetitive load cycle on the change of nonlinearity parameter was analyzed. In addition, sensitivity comparison with the linear ultrasonic pulse velocity method was performed. Through the experimental results, the possibility of NRUS technique for the evaluation of stress state in prestressed beam was confirmed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.683-696
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• 2017

In this study, the reliability of nonlinear ultrasonic modulation based fatigue crack detection is improved using a feature-level data fusion approach. When two ultrasonic inputs at two distinct frequencies are applied to a specimen with a fatigue crack, modulation components at the summation and difference of these two input frequencies appear. First, the spectral amplitudes of the modulation components and their spectral correlations are defined as individual features. Then, a 2D feature space is constructed by combining these two features, and the presence of a fatigue crack is identified in the feature space. The effectiveness of the proposed fatigue crack detection technique is experimentally validated through cyclic loading tests of aluminum plates, full-scale steel girders and a rotating shaft component. Subsequently, the improved reliability of the proposed technique is quantitatively investigated using receiver operating characteristic analysis. The uniqueness of this study lies in (1) improvement of nonlinear ultrasonic modulation based fatigue crack detection reliability using feature-level data fusion, (2) reference-free fatigue crack diagnosis without using the baseline data obtained from the intact condition of the structure, (3) application to full-scale steel girders and shaft component, and (4) quantitative investigation of the improved reliability using receiver operating characteristic analysis.