• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.42-50
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• 2008

To evaluate rock bolt integrity, destructive test such as pull-out test has been commonly carried out. This method is known as time consuming, expensive, and inaccurate procedure. To improve destructive method, non-destructive techniques using transmitted guided ultrasonic waves were suggested. Note for the transmission method, the source for the generation of ultrasonic waves should be installed during the rock bolt construction. The purpose of this study is to investigate the reflection method using reflected guided ultrasonic waves to evaluate the integrity of the rock bolt grouted, and to compare the results evaluated by the reflection and transmission methods. The guided waves are generated by PZT element and received by AE sensor. The measured signals are analyzed by the wavelet transform. The results show that the energy velocities of guided ultrasonic waves increase with the defect ratio in both transmission and reflection method. The reflection method produces the lower velocity in all defect ratio. This research demonstrates that the reflection method may be suitable and easer method for the field tests.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.4
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• pp.435-444
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• 2020

Ultrasonic guided wave testing is a very promising non-destructive testing method for rails, which is of great significance for ensuring the safe operation of railways. On the basis of the semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) method, a analytical model of 59R2 grooved rail was proposed, which is commonly used in the ballastless track of modern tram. The dispersion curves of ultrasonic guided waves in free rail and supported rail were obtained. Sensitivity analysis was then undertaken to evaluate the effect of rail elastic modulus on the phase velocity and group velocity dispersion curves of ultrasonic guided waves. The optimal guided wave mode, optimal excitation point and excitation direction suitable for detecting rail integrity were identified by analyzing the frequency, number of modes, and mode shapes. A sinusoidal signal modulated by a Hanning window with a center frequency of 25 kHz was used as the excitation source, and the propagation characteristics of high-frequency ultrasonic guided waves in the rail were obtained. The results show that the rail pad has a relatively little influence on the dispersion curves of ultrasonic guided waves in the high frequency band, and has a relatively large influence on the dispersion curves of ultrasonic guided waves in the low frequency band below 4 kHz. The rail elastic modulus has significant influence on the phase velocity in the high frequency band, while the group velocity is greatly affected by the rail elastic modulus in the low frequency band.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.26-30
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• 2011

In order to ship low & Intermediate level radioactive waste drums, which have been temporarily stored on site, to a disposal facility, their physical and chemical properties should be evaluated and proven to meet the acceptance guideline prior to their shipment. Ultrasonic velocity method, which has been used to estimate the strength of concrete, can be suggested to evaluate the compressive strength of solidified radioactive waste, which is one of the evaluated properties. The strength is estimated from acoustic velocity. However, a guided wave traveling along a drum is generated when applying ultrasonic method to the drum, and this makes it difficult to analyze the signal due to overlap between transmitted wave through the contents in drum and the guided wave. This paper reported feasibility of ultrasonic method to evaluate of the compressive strength of the solidified LLW. It is observed that the guide wave is greater than transmitted wave, and ultrasonic velocity could be estimated from transmitted wave signal arriving prior to the guided wave

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.20-24
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• 2009

There is extensive tubing pipe in the nuclear power plant under high temperature and pressure. Erosion and corrosion defects are expected on this tubing pipe due to environmental and mechanical factors. In this study, Guided Ultrasonic Wave technique was applied to detect defects. The technique explores the advantages of the Guided Ultrasonic Wave method that inspects along the wall of the pipe and can travel long distances, providing rapid collection of data. This paper presents a case study of the Guided Ultrasonic Wave testing of 3/8" tubing pipe. This study offers to understand detected signals through correlation between amplitude and depth of defects.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.435-440
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• 2014

Contact-guided-wave tests are impractical for investigating specimens with limited accessibility and rough surfaces or complex geometric features. A non-contact setup with a laser-ultrasonic transmitter and receiver is quite attractive for guided-wave inspection. In the present work, we developed a non-contact guided-wave tomography technique using the laser-ultrasonic technique in a plate. A method for Lamb-wave generation and detection in an aluminum plate with a pulsed laser-ultrasonic transmitter and Michelson-interferometer receiver was developed. The defect shape and area in the images obtained using laser scanning, showed good agreement with the actual defect. The proposed approach can be used as a non-contact online inspection and monitoring technique.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.445-461
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• 2019

The ultrasonic guided wave-based technique has become one of the most promising methods in non-destructive evaluation and structural health monitoring, because of its advantages of large area inspection, evaluating inaccessible areas on the structure and high sensitivity to small damage. To further advance the development of damage detection technologies using ultrasonic guided waves for the inspection of welded components in structures, the transmission characteristics of the ultrasonic guided waves propagating through welded joints with various types of defects or damage in steel plates are studied and presented in this paper. A three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) model considering the different material properties of the mild steel, high strength steel and austenitic stainless steel plates and their corresponding welded joints as well as the interaction condition of the steel plate and welded joint, is developed. The FE model is validated against analytical solutions and experimental results reported in the literature and is demonstrated to be capable of providing a reliable prediction on the features of ultrasonic guided wave propagating through steel plates with welded joints and interacting with defects. Mode conversion and scattering analysis of guided waves transmitted through the different types of weld defects in steel plates are performed by using the validated FE model. Parametric studies are undertaken to elucidate the effects of several basic parameters for various types of weld defects on the transmission performance of guided waves. The findings of this research can provide a better understanding of the transmission behaviour of ultrasonic guided waves propagating through welded joints with defects. The method could be used for improving the performance of guided wave damage detection methods.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.117-123
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• 2009

This paper presents a numerical simulation of guided ultrasonic waves propagating in aluminum-epoxy-aluminum adhesive plates. In particular, this study investigated the effect of the epoxy thickness on the dispersive patterns, such as the phase velocity and group velocity of guided ultrasonic waves. In addition to investigating the dispersive curves, a numerical simulation using the pulse-echo method was carried out. This simulation showed that the degree of sensitivity of the epoxy thickness is dependent on the curvature of the phase and group dispersion curves, the maximum amplitude of the received time signals, and the peak frequency of the real components of the Fourier transform. Then, the linear relations between the epoxy thickness and the received and transformed signals were constructed to estimate the epoxy thickness.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.140-145
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• 2010

This study presents a detection method for mechanically fabricated defects on underwater steel pipes, using ultrasonic guided waves. Three different diameters (60, 90, and 114 mm) of 1000-mm long steel pipes were considered, along with several experimental design factors such as incident angles, incident distances, and the degrees of defects, to investigate how these factors affected the experimental results - the detectability of the mechanical defects. From the experimental results, we determined that the amplitude and arrival time of the first received wave signals gave a promising clue for distinguishing the existence of the defects and their severities. Between the amplitude and arrival time, the arrival time gave a more promising indication since it was affected by the experimental factors in a constant manner. Therefore, it was shown that the use of ultrasonic guided waves for underwater pipe inspection is feasible.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.301-309
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• 2022

Protective coatings are most widely used anticorrosive structures for steel structures. The corrosion under the coating damages the host material, but this damage is completely hidden. Therefore, a field-applicable under-coating-corrosion visualization method has been desired for a long time. Laser ultrasonic technology has been studied in various fields as an in situ nondestructive inspection method. In this study, a comparative analysis was carried out between a guided-wave ultrasonic propagation imager (UPI) and pulse-echo UPI, which have the potential to be used in the field of under-coating-corrosion management. Both guided-wave UPI and pulse-echo UPI were able to successfully visualize the corrosion. Regarding the field application, the guided-wave UPI performing Q-switch laser scanning and piezoelectric sensing by magnetic attachment exhibited advantages owing to the larger distance and incident angle in the laser measurement than those of the pulse-echo UPI. Regarding the corrosion visualization methods, the combination of adjacent wave subtraction and variable time window amplitude mapping (VTWAM) provided acceptable results for the guided-wave UPI, while VTWAM was sufficient for the pule-echo UPI. In addition, the capability of multiple sensing in a single channel of the guided-wave UPI could improve the field applicability as well as the relatively smaller size of the system. Thus, we propose a guided-wave UPI as a tool for under-coating-corrosion management.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2014.10a
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• pp.550-554
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• 2014

Regarding thin films in MEMS/NEMS structures, the exact evaluation of mechanical properties is very essential to enhance the reliability of their design and manufacturing. However, such methods as a tensile test and a resonance test, general methods to measure elastic moduli, cannot be applied to thin films since its thickness is so small. This work concerns guided wave based elastic modulus measurement method. To this end, guided wave excitation and detection system using a pulsed laser and a laser interferometry has been established. Also an elastic modulus extraction algorithm from the measured guided wave signal was developed. Finally, it was applied to actual thin film structures such as Ni-Si and Al-Si multilayers. From experimental results, we confirm that the proposed method has considerable feasibility to measure elastic properties of thin films.