• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.91-102
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• 2008

Nondestructive testing techniques have been historically and commonly used to evaluate the quality of existing concrete structures. The techniques utilized included visual inspection, hammer sounding, Schmidt hammer rebounding, and ultrasonic pulse velocity testing including tomographic imaging. Results of the nondestructive tests were used to determine areas to be tested with local destructive tests. These tests included concrete compressive strengths, chloride testing, and petrographic testing. The overall results indicate that inside core of each of the pier caps are healthy. On all of the pier caps, extensive exterior concrete layer rehabilitation needs to be completed. This paper shows the application and interpretation of common nondestructive testing techniques and the consequent repair, rehabilitation, maintenance decisions and safety assesment.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.229-236
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• 2006

The acoustic field analysis method is the superior calibration method for rectifying the ultrasonic probe sensitivity. This method also can be applied to evaluate the probe performance in clinical fields without numerical analysis and precise measurements. In this paper, we propose the method of acoustic field pattern analysis with probe channel division for the evaluation of diagnostic ultrasound probe characterization. In order to verify our purpose, we performed a set of experiments. We measured the acoustic-field pattern of the three inferiority probes by channel division to evaluate an acoustic field distribution and impulse response characteristics. By comparing the results of acoustic field measurement method with that of conventional method such as impulse response and live image test for linear array probes, it is demonstrated that the ultrasound field measurement method is more effective then conventional method in detection of defective elements.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.182-189
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• 2014

This paper proposed a framework of recognition and tracking for underwater objects using sonar images as an alternative of underwater optical camera which has the limitation of usage due to turbidity. In Part 1, a design and recognition method for 2D artificial landmark was proposed considering the practical performance of current imaging sonars. In particular, its materials are selected in order to maximize detectability based on characteristics of imaging sonar and ultrasonic waves. It has a simple and omni-directional shape which allows an easy modeling of object, and it includes region based features as identifications. Also, we proposed a real-time recognition algorithm including edge detector, Hough circle transforms, and shape matrix based recognition algorithm. The proposed methods are verified by basin tests using DIDSON.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.405-414
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• 2009

This paper proposed a methodology based on ultrasonic diffraction technique to inspect the depth of a crack initiated from a notch of CT specimen by fatigue test, and its usefulness was verified by experiments. Especially, in order to identify accurately the diffractive waves from the crack tip in the situation where there are extra diffractive elements such as a notch, we have tried imaging by transducer scan and analyzed the propagation path of diffracted wave. Two specimens with and without a crack were experimented. Higher frequency and larger refractive angle of transducer showed a tendency to decrease the error in the measurements, and the measured crack depth showed an error less than 0.38 mm in case of 4 MHz $60^{\circ}-60^{\circ}$. The proposed methodology is applicable to weak diffractive sources, and so that it would be useful to inspect micro cracks and for their depth sizing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2002.03a
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• pp.751-758
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• 2002

Boreholes that are drilled in soft or unconsolidated materials such as gravels and coals are prone to collapse. To maintain the hole, some kinds of casing pipes are needed. If thereby a plastic pipe e.g. PVC is used for the casing, Televiewer tool is still capable of detecting structural features such as fractures in the borehole wall behind the pipe, whereas other borehole-imaging logging devices such as BIPS (Borehole Image Processing System) and FMS(Formation Micro Scanner) won't provide any information about that. Televiewer's primary component is a piezoelectric transducer centered in the hole. It acts as both a transmitter and receiver, and sends an ultrasonic beam. That is reflected, in the same manner as the seismic wave propagation, from the both sides(inner and outer surfaces) of the casing pipe, transmits through the pipe and then reflected from the borehole wall. With an appropriate choice of time-windowing, it is possible to capture the returning signals from both the borehole wall and the outer side of casing pipe as well. A suite of laboratory tests were performed on various physical models composed of plastic pipes with different diameters. Although the amplitudes of returning signals were reduced to about half the usual value due to the transmission loss, the dynamic range of Televiewer tool was sufficient to observe the structural features behind the casing pipe. Besides, several representative case studies at various research areas in our country are presented. The results demonstrate the usefulness of the transmissivity of Televiewer acoustic km, which will assist in further structural interpretation.

• Advanced Composite Materials
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.43-59
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• 2009

The current study assessed the effect of a bolt hole on tensile fatigue properties of CFRP laminates. Two specimens, i.e. $[(0/90)_3]S$, $[(0/45/90/-45)_2]_S$, were analyzed using a finite element method and were experimentally tested for cases, both with and without a hole, whose diameter corresponded to 0.12 times the specimen width. Delamination positions predicted by a 3-dimensional static finite element analysis were matched well to those observed by an ultrasonic imaging system in the middle of fatigue test. A hole whose diameter corresponds to 0.12 times the specimen width caused the fatigue strength to decrease by 9% and 11% under 5 Hz loading frequency, and by 22% and 25% under 10 Hz loading frequency for $[(0/90)_3]_S$ and $[(0/45/90/-45)_2]_S$, respectively. Because the decrease in sectional area due to the hole was normalized in calculation of the tensile strength, a stress concentration around the hole is believed to induce the strength degradation of fatigue specimens. From the finite element analyses, the stress concentration factor around a hole was expected as 8.8 and 9.5 for $[(0/90)_3]_S$ and $[(0/45/90/-45)_2]_S$, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.27-31
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• 2014

This paper describes a tomographic imaging technique for evaluating the thickness reduction of a plate-like structure using a noncontact sensor network based on an electromagnetic acoustic transducer that generates shear horizontal plate waves. Because this technique is based on the effect of mode cutoff and time of flight of guided waves caused by a change in thickness, the tomographic image provides information on the presence of defects in the structure. To verify the performance of the method, artificial defects with various thickness reduction ratios were machined in an aluminum plate, and the tomographic imaging results are reported. The results show that the generated tomographic image displays the thickness reductions and can identify their locations. Therefore, the proposed technique has good potential as a tool for health monitoring of the integrity of plate-like structures.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.569-577
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• 2010

Nonplanar surface geometries of components are frequently encountered in real ultrasonic inspection situations. Use of rigid array transducers can lead to beam defocusing and reduction of defect image quality due to the mismatch between the planar array and the changing surface. When a flexible array is used to fit the complex surface profile, the locations of array elements should be known to compute the delay time necessary for adaptive heam focusing. An alternative method is to employ the time reversal focusing technique that does not require a prior knowledge about the properties and structures of the specimen and the transducer. In this paper, a time reversal method is applied to simulate beam focusing of flexible arrays and imaging of point-like defects contained in specimens with nonplanar surface geometry. Quantitative comparisons are made for the performance of a number of array techniques in terms of the ability to focus and image three point-like reflectors positioned at regular intervals. The sinusoidal profile array studied here exhibits almost the same image quality as the flat, reference case.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.395-401
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• 2017

In this paper, we introduce a robot-assisted medical diagnostic system that enables remote ultrasound (US) imaging to be applied to the conventional telemedicine, which has been possible only with interviewing or a visual exam. In particular, a master-slave robot system is developed that ultrasonic diagnosis specialist can control the position and orientation of US probe in the remote place. The slave robot is designed to be compact, lightweight, and hand-held so that it can easily transfer to the remote healthcare center. Moreover, 6-degree-of-freedom (DOF) probe motion is possible by the robot design based on Stewart platform. The master device is also based on a similar structure of the slave robot. To connect master and slave system in the wide area network (WAN) environment, a hardware CODEC was developed. In this paper, we introduce the detail of each component and the results of the recent experiments conducted in the remote sites by the developed robotic ultrasound imaging system.

• Proceedings of the Optical Society of Korea Conference
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• 2000.08a
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• pp.118-120
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• 2000

Currently, x-ray is mostly used for the diagnosis of dental cavity and osteoporosis. The osteoporosis is broadly defined as a decrease in the amount of bone mass per unit volume of the bone. Clinically the manifestation of low bone mass presents a clinical problem to the general population as an increase in fracture risk and especially in aging population[1]. Although the amount of the irradiated x-ray to the human body for the clinical diagnosis is relatively small, the exposition of the x-ray to the human body should be minimized as much as possible, since the x-ray is an ionizing radiation. To investigate other possible systems replacing X-ray, ultrasonic imaging and MRI(Magneto-Resonance-Imaging) systems were studied. Unfortunately, an effective and safe diagnosis tool for detecting the dental cavity and the osteoporosis is currently lacking. (omitted)