• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제25권4호
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• pp.423-432
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• 2020

In this paper, a novel but practical approach named series/parallel multi-sensing technique was proposed to evaluate the bolt looseness in a bolt group. The smart washers (SWs), which were fabricated by embedding a Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) transducer into two flat metal rings, were installed to the bolts group. By series connection of SWs, the impedance signals of different bolts can be obtained through only one sweep. Therefore, once the loosening occurred, the shift of different peak frequencies can be used to locate which bolt has loosened. The proposed multi input single output (MISO) damage detection scheme is very suitable for the structural health monitoring (SHM) of joint with a large number of bolts connection. Another notable contribution of this paper is the proposal of 3-dB bandwidth root mean square deviation (3 dB-RMSD) which can quantitatively evaluate the severity of bolt looseness. Compared with the traditional naked-eye observation method, the equivalent circuit based 3-dB bandwidth can accurately define the calculation range of RMSD. An experiment with three bolted connection specimens that installed the SWs was carried out to validate our proposed approach. Experimental result shows that the proposed 3 dB-RMSD based multi-sensing technique can not only identify the loosened bolt but also monitor the severity of bolt looseness.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제17권1호
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• pp.135-147
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• 2016

This paper describes a smart structural system, which uses smart materials for real-time monitoring and active control of bolted-joints in steel structures. The goal of this research is to reduce the possibility of failure and the cost of maintenance of steel structures such as bridges, electricity pylons, steel lattice towers and so on. The concept of the smart structural system combines impedance based health monitoring techniques with a shape memory alloy (SMA) washer to restore the tension of the loosened bolt. The impedance-based structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques were used to detect loosened bolts in bolted-joints. By comparing electrical impedance signatures measured from a potentially damage structure with baseline data obtained from the pristine structure, the bolt loosening damage could be detected. An outlier analysis, using generalized extreme value (GEV) distribution, providing optimal decision boundaries, has been carried out for more systematic damage detection. Once the loosening damage was detected in the bolted joint, the external heater, which was bonded to the SMA washer, actuated the washer. Then, the heated SMA washer expanded axially and adjusted the bolt tension to restore the lost torque. Additionally, temperature variation due to the heater was compensated by applying the effective frequency shift (EFS) algorithm to improve the performance of the diagnostic results. An experimental study was conducted by integrating the piezoelectric material based structural health monitoring and the SMA-based active control function on a bolted joint, after which the performance of the smart 'self-monitoring and self-healing bolted joint system' was demonstrated.

• 한국재난정보학회 논문집
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• 제16권1호
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• pp.144-154
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• 2020

연구목적: 본 논문은 밸브의 누수 상태를 확인하기 위한 모니터링 시스템을 위하여 개발된 스마트 볼트의 적용성에 대한 기초 연구이다. 연구방법: 스마트 볼트에 내장된 변형률 센서와 가속도 센서를 이용하여 모의 누수 탐지 실험을 실시하였다. 연구결과: 스마트 볼트는 볼트 조임토크 기준에 부합하였으며 허용인장응력 범위 내에서 거동을 하여 상수도 체결부 적용에 부합되는 것으로 나타났다. 그리고 모의 누수 실험결과 밸브 누수 지점에선 60Hz 대역의 누수 신호가 탐지 되었으며, 메인관 누수에서는 상대적으로 고주파수 대역의 누수 신호도 탐지되었다. 결론: 모의 배관이 구속되지 않은 상태에서 전체적으로 연성진동이 이뤄진 것으로 보인다. 스마트 볼트를 통해 밸브 누수 신호의 감지에 대한 가능성을 확인하였다.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제24권3호
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• pp.293-301
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• 2019

Bolted joints are commonly used in civil infrastructure and mechanical assembly structures. Monitoring and identifying the connection status of bolts is the frontier problem of structural research. The existing research is mainly on the looseness of a single bolt. This article presents a study of assessing the loosening/tightening health state and identifying the loose bolt by using ultrasonic guided wave in a bolt group joint. A bolt-tightening index was proposed for evaluating the looseness of a bolt connection based on correlation coefficient. The tightening/loosening state of the bolt was simulated by changing the bolt torque. More than 180 different measurement tests for total of six bolts were conducted. The results showed that with the bolt torque increases, value of the proposed bolt-tightening index increases. The proposed bolt-tightening index trend was very well reproduced by an analytical expression using a function of the torque applied with an overall percentage error lower than 5%. The developed damage index based on the proposed bolt-tightening index can also be applied to locate the loosest bolt in a bolt group joint. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, a bolt group joint experiment with different positions of bolt looseness was performed. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is effective to detect and locate bolt looseness and has a good prospect of finding applications in real-time structural monitoring.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제30권5호
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• pp.513-520
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• 2022

During the long-time service of a bolt, its preload may suffer slight perturbations or significant reductions. It is a dilemma to monitor preload changes at high resolution and full scale. Approaches for bolt preload monitoring with multi-resolution should be developed. In this paper, a simple and effective multi-resolution bolt preload monitoring approach using ultrasonic guided waves (UGW) is proposed. A linear relationship between the time-of-flight (TOF) variation of multi-reflected waves and preload is derived to theoretically reveal the multi-resolution properties of UGW. The variations of TOF before and after the slight preload perturbations are extracted by using a global evaluation method. Experimental results show that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd-reflected UGWs is larger than 20 dB. The resolution of the 2^nd-reflected UGW is higher than that of the 1^st-reflected UGW and lower than that of the 3^rd-reflected UGW. The ultimate detectable resolutions of bolt preload (DRBP) of the 1^st and 3^th-reflected UGWs are 0.9% and 0.5%, respectively. By using the 1^st and 3^th-reflected guided waves, the bolt looseness with different degrees can be monitored simultaneously.

• 한국정밀공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국정밀공학회 2006년도 추계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.33-34
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• 2006

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제30권4호
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• pp.397-410
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• 2022

It is essential to monitor the working conditions of bolt-connected joints, which are widely used in various kinds of steel structures. The looseness of bolts may directly affect the stability and safety of the entire structure. In this study, a guided wave-based method for bolt looseness detection and localization is presented for a joint structure with multiple bolts. SH waves generated and received by a small number (two pairs) of magnetostrictive transducers were used. The bolt looseness index was proposed based on the changes in the reconstructed responses excited by the time reversal signals of the measured unit impulse responses. The damage locations and local damage severities were estimated using the damage indices from several wave propagation paths. The back propagation neural network (BPNN) technique was employed to identify the local damages. Numerical and experimental studies were conducted on a lap joint with eight bolts. The results show that the total damage severity can be successfully detected under the effect of external force and measurement noise. The local damage severity can be estimated reasonably for the experimental data using the BPNN constructed by the training patterns generated from the finite element simulations.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제32권1호
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• pp.23-35
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• 2023

Steel bolted joint is an important part of steel structure, and its damage directly affects the bearing capacity and durability of steel structure. Currently, the existing research mainly focuses on the identification of corroded bolts and corroded bolts respectively, and there are few studies on multiple states. A detection framework of corroded and loosened bolts is proposed in this study, and the innovations can be summarized as follows: (i) Vision Transformer (ViT) is introduced to replace the third and fourth C3 module of you-only-look-once version 5s (YOLOv5s) algorithm, which increases the attention weights of feature channels and the feature extraction capability. (ii) Three states of the steel bolts are considered, including corroded bolt, bolt missing and clean bolt. (iii) Line segment detector (LSD) is introduced for bolt rotation angle calculation, which realizes bolt looseness detection. The improved YOLOv5s model was validated on the dataset, and the mean average precision (mAP) was increased from 0.902 to 0.952. In terms of a lab-scale joint, the performance of the LSD algorithm and the Hough transform was compared from different perspective angles. The error value of bolt loosening angle of the LSD algorithm is controlled within 1.09%, less than 8.91% of the Hough transform. Furthermore, the proposed framework was applied to fullscale joints of a steel bridge in China. Synthetic images of loosened bolts were successfully identified and the multiple states were well detected. Therefore, the proposed framework can be alternative of monitoring steel bolted joints for management department.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제15권1호
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• pp.41-55
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• 2015

This study proposes a laser based impedance measurement system and impedance based pipe corrosion and bolt-loosening monitoring techniques under temperature variations. For impedance measurement, the laser based impedance measurement system is optimized and adopted in this paper. First, a modulated laser beam is radiated to a photodiode, converting the laser beam into an electric signal. Then, the electric signal is applied to a MFC transducer attached on a target structure for ultrasonic excitation. The corresponding impedance signals are measured, re-converted into a laser beam, and radiated back to the other photodiode located in a data interrogator. The transmitted impedance signals are treated with an outlier analysis using generalized extreme value (GEV) statistics to reliably signal off structural damage. Validation of the proposed technique is carried out to detect corrosion and bolt-loosening in lab-scale carbon steel elbow pipes under varying temperatures. It has been demonstrated that the proposed technique has a potential to be used for structural health monitoring (SHM) of pipe structures.

• 한국지반신소재학회논문집
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• 제18권4호
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• pp.129-138
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• 2019

본 연구에서는 모니터링이 가능한 나선형 철근 록볼트 센서와 GFRP 록볼트 센서를 대형 모형사면에 매설하여 사면붕괴 현장실험을 수행하고 개별요소법 및 유한요소법의 수치해석을 수행한 후 사면붕괴 초기에 발생하는 비탈면의 거동 특성을 분석하였다. 또한, 현장실험과 수치해석 결과를 비교·분석하고 나선형 철근 록볼트 센서와 GFRP 록볼트 센서의 암반 사면붕괴 모니터링으로 현장 적용성에 대해 고찰하였다. 본 연구를 통해 스마트 사면 붕괴 예·경보 시스템을 개발하였으며 향후 이 시스템은 산사태 및 지반 붕괴 전조정보를 사전에 감지하여 붕괴위험 지역에 거주하는 주민들의 원활한 대피를 유도하는데 활용될 수 있을 것으로 판단된다.