• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.241-262
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• 2011

Cast iron pipe has been used as a water distribution technology in North America since the early nineteenth century. The first cast iron pipes were made of grey cast iron which was succeeded by ductile iron as a pipe material in the 1940s. These different iron alloys have significantly different microstructures which give rise to distinct mechanical properties. Insight into the non-destructive structural condition assessment of aging pipes can be advantageous in developing mitigation strategies for pipe failures. This paper examines the relationship between the small-strain and large-strain properties of exhumed cast iron water pipes. Nondestructive and destructive testing programs were performed on eight pipes varying in age from 40 to 130 years. The experimental program included microstructure evaluation and ultrasonic, tensile, and flexural testing. New applications of frequency domain analysis techniques including Fourier and wavelet transforms of ultrasonic pulse velocity measurements are presented. A low correlation between wave propagation and large-strain measurements was observed. However, the wave velocities were consistently different between ductile and grey cast iron pipes (14% to 18% difference); the ductile iron pipes showed the smaller variation in wave velocities. Thus, the variation of elastic properties for ductile iron was not enough to define a linear correlation because all the measurements were practically concentrated in single cluster of points. The cross-sectional areas of the specimens tested varied as a result of minor manufacturing defects and levels of corrosion. These variations affect the large strain testing results; but, surface defects have limited effect on wave velocities and may also contribute to the low correlations observed. Lamb waves are typically not considered in the evaluation of ultrasonic pulse velocity. However, Lamb waves were found to contribute significantly to the frequency content of the ultrasonic signals possibly resulting in the poor correlations observed. Therefore, correlations between wave velocities and large strain properties obtained using specimens manufactured in the laboratory must be used with caution in the condition assessment of aged water pipes especially for grey cast iron pipes.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.643-662
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• 2016

The monitoring of structural integrity of pipeline tapered thread connections is of great significance in terms of safe operation in the industry. In order to detect effectively the loosening degree of tapered thread connection, an active sensing method using piezoceramic transducers was developed based on time reversal technique in this paper. As the piezoeramic transducers can be either as actuators or sensors to generate or detect stress waves, the energy transmission for tapered thread connection was analyzed. Subsequently, the detection principle for tapered thread connection based on time reversal was introduced. Finally, the inherent relationship between the contact area and tightness degree of tapered thread connection for the pipe structural model was investigated. Seven different contact area scenarios were tested. Each scenario was created by loosening connectors ranging from 3 turns to 4.5 turns in the right tapered threads when the contact area in the left tapered threads were 4.5 turns. The experiments were separately conducted with a highly noisy environment and various excitation signal amplitudes. The results show the focused peaks based on time reversal have the monotonously rising trend with the increase of the contact areas of tapered threads within an acceptable monitoring resolution for metal pipes. Compared with the energy method, the proposed time reversal based method to monitor tapered threads loosening demonstrates to be more robust in rejecting noise in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.141-148
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• 2017

The waterworks company is in charge of managing water facilities buried underground, and the management has been centered on manholes. However, since there is no standard management manual, it has been impossible to introduce and operate a systemized managing tool by water service providers and managers, and manhole management has been carried out by individual data recording personnel for each water service provider. When the management is carried out individually, the data to be shared by other waterworks managers tend to be privatized, and consequently, it may become a big obstacle to proceed with many civil works such as emergency leak repair, road excavation, replacement of old buildings. This report introduces RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) system which is based on the magnetic field capable of IOT. It also describes the necessity of leveraging the system for smart managing of pipe management record that has been done by hand writing. The RFID system includes RFID marker, data reader, portable computer operating program, and data base server operating program. In this system, the data is managed with a single communication device, and it would be possible to share the information on the underground facilities and water treatment facilities. This RFID technology is expected to provide water service providers with opportunities to develop more scientific and modernized underground facilities information systems.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.453-476
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• 2013

DuraMote is a remote sensing system developed for the "NIST TIP project: next generation SCADA for prevention and mitigation of water system infrastructure disaster". It is designed for supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) of ruptures in water pipes. Micro-electro mechanical (MEMS) accelerometers, which record the vibration of the pipe wall, are used detect the ruptures. However, the performance of Duramote cannot be verified directly on a water distribution system because it lacks an acceptable recordable level of ambient vibration. Instead, a long-span cable-stayed bridge is an ideal test-bed to validate the accuracy, the reliability, and the robustness of DuraMote because the bridge has an acceptable level of ambient vibration. The acceleration data recorded on the bridge were used to identify the modal properties of the structure and to verify the performance of DuraMote. During the test period, the bridge was subjected to heavy rain, wind, and a typhoon but the system demonstrates its robustness and durability.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.255-264
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• 2020

This paper deals with a defect classification technique that considers the structural characteristics of a refrigerant compressor. First, the pressure pulsation of the refrigerant flowing in the suction pipe of a normal compressor was measured at the same time as the acceleration of the shell surface, and then the transfer function between the two signals was estimated. Next, the frequency-weighted acceleration signals of the defect classification target compressors were generated using the estimated transfer function. The estimation of the variance of the transfer function is presented to formulate the frequency-weighted acceleration signals. The estimated frequency-weighted accelerations were applied to defect classification using frequency-domain features. Experiments were performed using commercial compressors to verify the technique. The results confirmed that it is possible to perform an effective defect classification of the refrigerant compressor by the shell surface acceleration of the compressor. The proposed method could make it possible to improve the total inspection performance for compressors in a mass-production line.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.71-79
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• 2019

In general, it may be advantageous to measure the pressure pulsation near a valve to detect a valve defect in a linear compressor. However, the acceleration signals are more advantageous for rapid classification in a mass-production line. This paper deals with the performance improvement of fault classification using only the compressor-shell acceleration signal based on the relation between the refrigerant pressure pulsation and the shell acceleration of the compressor. A transfer function was estimated experimentally to take into account the signal noise ratio between the pressure pulsation of the refrigerant in the suction pipe and the shell acceleration. The shell acceleration signal of the compressor was modified using this transfer function to improve the defect classification performance. The defect classification of the modified signal was evaluated in the acceleration signal in the frequency domain using Fisher's discriminant ratio (FDR). The defect classification method was validated by experimental data. By using the method presented, the classification of valve defects can be performed rapidly and efficiently during mass production.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.275-281
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• 2023

In recent years, technological developments have rapidly increased the number of complex structures and equipment in the industrial. Accordingly, the prognostics and health monitoring (PHM) technology has become significant. The safety assessment of industrial sites requires data obtained by installing a number of sensors in the structure. Therefore, digital twin technology, which forms the core of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is attracting attention in the safety field. The research on digital twin technology of structures subjected to seismic loads has been conducted recently. Hence, this study proposes a digital twin system that estimates the responses and arbitrary load in real time by utilizing the minimum sensor to a pipe that receives a seismic and arbitrary load. To construct the digital twin system, a finite-element model was created considering the dynamic characteristics of the pipe system, and then updating the finite-element model. In addition, the calculation speed was improved using a finite-element model that applied the reduced-order modeling (ROM) technology to achieve real-time performance. The constructed digital twin system successfully and rapidly estimated the load and the point where the sensor was not attached. The accuracy of the constructed digital twin system was verified by comparing the response of the digital twin model with that derived by using the load estimated from the digital twin model as input in the finite-element model.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.575-589
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• 2020

For vibration control of stay cables in cable-stayed bridges, viscous dampers are frequently used, and they are regularly installed between the cable and the bridge deck. In practice, neoprene rubber bushings (or of other types) are also widely installed inside the cable guide pipe, mainly for reducing the bending stresses of the cable near its anchorages. Therefore, it is important to understand the effect of the bushings on the performance of the external damper. Besides, for long cables, external dampers installed at a single position near a cable end can no longer provide enough damping due to the sag effect and the limited installation distance. It is thus of interest to improve cable damping by additionally installing dampers inside the guide pipe. This paper hence studies the combined effects of an external damper and an internal damper (which can also model the bushings) on a stay cable. The internal damper is assumed to be a High Damping Rubber (HDR) damper, and the external damper is considered to be a viscous damper with intrinsic stiffness, and the cable sag is also considered. Both the cases when the two dampers are installed close to one cable end and respectively close to the two cable ends are studied. Asymptotic design formulas are derived for both cases considering that the dampers are close to the cable ends. It is shown that when the two dampers are placed close to different cable ends, their combined damping effects are approximately the sum of their separate contributions, regardless of small cable sag and damper intrinsic stiffness. When the two dampers are installed close to the same end, maximum damping that can be achieved by the external damper is generally degraded, regardless of properties of the HDR damper. Field tests on an existing cable-stayed bridge have further validated the influence of the internal damper on the performance of the external damper. The results suggest that the HDR is optimally placed in the guide pipe of the cable-pylon anchorage when installing viscous dampers at one position is insufficient. When an HDR damper or the bushing has to be installed near the external damper, their combined damping effects need to be evaluated using the presented methods.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.15-21
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• 2004

It is possible to detect flaws in pipelines without interruption using all EMAT transducer because it is a non-contact transducer which can transmit ultrasonic waves into specimens without couplant. And it ran easily generate guided waves desired in each specific problem by altering the design of coil and magnet. In the present work, EMAT systems have been fabricated to generate surface waves, and selectively the plate wave of $A_1\;or\;S_1$ mode. The surface wave of 1.5MHz showed a good signal-to-noise ratio without distortion in its propagation along a pipeline, while the $S_1$ mode of 800kHz and the $A_1$ mode of 940kHz were distorted according to their dispersive properties. The wider the excitation pulse becomes, the better the mode selectivity of the plate waves becomes. A pipe of 256mm inner diameter and 5.5m thickness with 5 flaws was used for comparing the flaw detectability among the modes under consideration.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.461-472
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• 2012

This study proposes an optics-based active sensing system for continuous monitoring of underground pipelines in nuclear power plants (NPPs). The proposed system generates and measures guided waves using a single laser source and optical cables. First, a tunable laser is used as a common power source for guided wave generation and sensing. This source laser beam is transmitted through an optical fiber, and the fiber is split into two. One of them is used to actuate macro fiber composite (MFC) transducers for guided wave generation, and the other optical fiber is used with fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors to measure guided wave responses. The MFC transducers placed along a circumferential direction of a pipe at one end generate longitudinal and flexural modes, and the corresponding responses are measured using FBG sensors instrumented in the same configuration at the other end. The generated guided waves interact with a defect, and this interaction causes changes in response signals. Then, a damage-sensitive feature is extracted from the response signals using the axi-symmetry nature of the measured pitch-catch signals. The feasibility of the proposed system has been examined through a laboratory experiment.