• International Journal of Safety
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.17-22
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• 2008

Recent developments in contactless, air-coupled sensing of seismic and ultrasonic waves in concrete structures are presented. Contactless sensing allows for rapid, efficient and consistent data collection over a large volume of material. Two inspection applications are discussed: air-coupled impact-echo scanning of concrete structures using seismically generated waves, and air-coupled imaging of internal damages in concrete using ultrasonic tomography. The first application aims to locate and characterize shallow delamination defects within concrete bridge decks. Impact-echo method is applied to scan defected concrete slabs using air coupled sensors. Next, efforts to apply air-coupled ultrasonic tomography to concrete damage imaging are discussed. Preliminary results are presented for air-coupled ultrasonic tomography applied to solid elements to locate internal defects. The results demonstrate that, with continued development, air-coupled ultrasonic tomography may provide improved evaluation of unseen material defects within structures.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.615-620
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• 1998

The nondestructive internal quality evaluation of agricultural products has been strongly required from the needs for individual inspection. In recent, ultrasonic wave has been considered as a solution for this problem. It transmit well through most materials and can handle safely and easily. However, specially in a watermelon, it is known that general frequency band (higher than 20kHz) ultrasonic waves do not transmitted well due to severe attenuation. The objectives of this study were to find out the proper waveform and frequency of the ultrasonic waves that transmit well inside the watermelon, and to analyze the transmitted waveform in order to make clear the structure of wave propagation in watermelon. The result of several experiments showed that 2kHz shear wave was the most suitable for the detection of internal cavity in the watermelon. Also, it was found that the surface wave did not influence the directly transmitted bulk wave. These results could be a basis of application of ultrasonic wave on the evaluation of internal quality of the watermelon.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.976-981
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• 2009

This paper proposed optimal design and microcontroller driver for driving the thin-type ultrasonic motor. To find the optimal size of the stator, motions of the motor were simulated using ATILA by changing length, width and thickness of the ceramics. Two sinusoidal waves which have 90 degree phase difference were needed for driving the thin-type motor. The thin-type ultrasonic motor driver was composed of microcontroller(Atmega128), push-pull inverter, encoder and AD-converter. Microcontroller generates four square waves which have variable frequency and 25[%] duty ratio in $20{\sim}150$[kHz]. The output signals of microcontroller were converted to sine wave and cosine wave by push-pull inverter and were applied to the thin-type ultrasonic motor. The encoder and AD-converter were used for maintaining speed of the thin-type ultrasonic motor. The AD-converter controlled DC voltage of inverter in accordance with output signal of encoder. Using the driver, characteristics of the motor as speed and torque were measured.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.401-409
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• 2012

Ultrasonic testing are far superior to other nondestructive tests for detecting the disbond interface which occurred in adhesive interface. However, a solid rocket motor consisting of a steel case, rubber insulation, liner, and propellant poses many difficulties for analyzing ultrasonic waves because of the superposition of reflected waves and large differences in acoustic impedance of various materials. Therefore, ultrasonic tests for detecting the disbond interface in solid rocket motor have been applied in very limited areas between the steel case and rubber insulation using an automatic C-scan system. The existing ultrasonic test cannot detect the disbond interface between the liner and propellant of a solid rocket motor because most of the ultrasonic waves are absorbed in the rubber material which has low acoustic impedance. This problem could be overcome by analyzing the resonance frequency from the frequency spectrum using the ultrasonic resonance method. In this paper, a new technique to detect the disbond interface between the liner and propellant using ultrasonic resonance characteristics is discussed in detail.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.30 no.5
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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.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.227-233
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• 2011

The ultrasonic guided wave phased array using magnetostrictive patch transducers is proposed. The magnetostrictive transducer has received much attention because it is cost-effective and capable to generate ultrasonic waves with a simple configuration. However, it has not been used for ultrasonic guided wave phased array applications until now. In this paper, we propose a magnetostrictive transducer based phased array system consisting of a multi-channel function generator, power amplifiers and Lamb wave magnetostrictive transducers. To check the performance of the ultrasonic guided wave phased array, several Lamb wave focusing experiments were carried out in an aluminum plate. The results demonstrated the capability of the developed array to focus the Lamb waves at specific target points.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.30-39
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• 2006

Feasibility is studied for an application of the mass-spring lattice model (MSLM), a numerical model previously developed for unidirectional composites, to the numerical simulation of ultrasonic inspection of austenitic welds modeled as transversely isotropic. Fundamental wave processes, such as propagation, reflection, refraction, and diffraction of ultrasonic waves in such an inspection are simulated using the MSLM. All numerical results show excellent agreement with the analytical results. Further, a simplified model of austenitic weld inspection has been successfully simulated using the MSLM. In conclusion, a great potential of the MSLM in numerically simulating ultrasonic inspections of austenitic welds has been manifested in this work, though significant further efforts will be required to develop a model with field practicality.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers Conference
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• 1999.10a
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• pp.476-481
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• 1999

This paper describes a new technique for measurement of the displacement less than one-quarter of the wavelength of ultrasonic wave using ultrasonic pulse-echo method. The technique determines the displacement of a journal bearing from the amplitudes of the total reflected waves from the surface of journal inside the bearing. Vibration of journal bearing can be measured without using a very high frequency ultrasonic transduce over 100MHz which must be used in the conventional techniques for the precision measurement of a small displacement. The method also requires no inversion process to extract the thickness from the waveforms of the reflected waves, so that it makes possible on-line measurement of the vibration of journal bearing.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.455-461
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• 2015

The paper deals with the accuracy comparison between two kinds of ultrasonic paths for flow rate measurement. In the Z-path, two transducers are installed on the opposite sides of each other on a pipe, and the ultrasonic waves generated at one transducer propagate to arrive at the other one only by refraction. In the V-path, two transducers are installed on one side of a pipe, and the ultrasonic waves reflected at the inner wall of the pipe are received. Transit times were confirmed to identify the propagation paths by comparing the theoretically calculated results and measured ones. The flow rate measurements with two kinds of ultrasonic paths appeared very similar. It would be possible to select either of the paths by considering the advantages and disadvantages.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.336-339
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• 2007

A sensor having capability to measure two different kinds of ultrasonic waves selectively is described. Under the same bias field configuration, this magnetostrictive type sensor can selectively measure longitudinal waves and flexural ones. Since the switching operation of mode selection is made only by changing the polarity of the permanent magnets used to configure the bias field, it will be very useful after the permanent magnet are interchanged with electromagnets. In order to find the optimal operating bias field, finite elements analysis is used and the condition for flexural wave measurements to meet is found. The linearity of the sensor is verified by experiments and the requirements for linearity also are proposed.