• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.282-290
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• 2013

A new method is presented that uses guided wave techniques for sludge and blockages detection in long-range pipelines. Existing techniques have the limitations that the sludge position needs to be known a priori and the area to be inspected needs to be accessible. Two guided wave techniques have been developed which allow the sludge or blockages to be detected remotely without the need to access the specific location where the pipe is blocked, nor to open the pipe. The first technique measures the reflection of guided waves by sludge which can be used to accurately locate the blocked region; the second technique detects sludge by revealing the changes to the transmitted guided waves propagating in the blocked region or after it. The two techniques complement each other and their combination leads to a reliable sludge or blockage detection. Various types of realistic sludge have been considered in the study and the practical capabilities of the two techniques have been demonstrated.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.239-245
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• 2007

A torsional guided wave mode in a tubular structure has many advantages in obtaining a higher sensitivity and lower attenuation for a defect, because it shows no dispersion characteristics and no radial displacement for a tubular structure. Many attempts have been made to excite and receive torsional guided waves by conventional piezoelectric transducers, but only a few examples are used during a practical field inspection. In this study, an array of electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) were for an excitation and reception of the torsional guided waves in a pipe was designed and fabricated. The signal patterns were analyzed based on various beam path length. The feasibility of detecting the defects was investigated through a series of experiments with artificial notches on a pipe.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.20-26
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• 2005

Ultrasonic guided waves have been widely employed for long range inspection of structures such as plates, rods and pipes. There are numerous modes with different wave velocities, and the appropriate mode selection is one of key techniques in the application of guided waves. In the present work, phase tuning by an array transducer was applied to generate ultrasonic guided waves. For this purpose, 8-channel ultrasonic pulser/receiver and their controller which enables sequential activation of each channels with given time delay were developed. Eight transducers were fabricated in order to generate guided waves by using an array transducer. The selective tuning of wave mode can be achieved by changing the interval between elements of an array transducer.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.114-121
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• 2009

Ultrasonic guided waves have been widely utilized for long range inspection of structures. Especially, development of array guided waves techniques and its application for long range gas pipe lines(length of from hundreds meters to few km) were getting increased. In this study, focusing algorithm for array guided waves was developed in order to improve long range inspectability and accuracy of the array guided waves techniques for long range inspection of gas pipes, and performance of the developed techniques was verified by experiments using the developed array guided wave system. As a result, S/N ratio of array guided wave signals obtained with the focusing algorithm was increased higher than that of signals without focusing algorithm.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.415-424
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• 2001

The destructive method is reliable and widely used for the estimation of material degradation but, it have time-consuming and a great difficulty in preparing specimens from in-service industrial facilities. Therefore, the estimation of degraded structural materials by nondestructive evaluation is strongly desired. In this paper, the use of guided wave was suggested for the evaluation on thermally damaged 2.25Cr-1Mo steel as an alternative way to compensate for limitations of fracture tests. The observation of microstructure variations of the material including carbide precipitation increase and spheroidization near grain boundary was conducted and the correlation with the guided wave features such as energy loss ration and group velocity changes was investigated. Through this study, the feasibility of ultrasonic guided wave evaluation for thermally damaged materials was explored.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.364-371
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• 2003

In this paper, a review of the current status, on the use of long range cylindrically guided wave modes, and their interaction with cracks and corrosion damage in pipe-like structures will be discussed. Applications of cylindrically guided ultrasonic wave modes have been developed for inspection of corrosion damage in pipelines at chemical plants, flow-accelerated corrosion damage (wall thinning) in feedwater piping, and circumferential stress corrosion cracks in PWR steam generator tubes. It has been demonstrated that this inspection technique can be employed on a variety of piping geometries (diameters from 1 in. to 3 ft, and wall thickness from 0.1 to 6 in.) and a propagation distance of 100 meters or more is sometimes feasible. This technique can also be used in the inspection of inaccessible or buried regions of pipes and tubes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.1382-1385
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• 2007

In this paper, we study about the measuring algorithm that can implement Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) more efficiently by two measurement methods using smart sensor. Through the impedance measurement method, the damage condition of structures on wide area is monitored first, and then it changes the mode to guided wave measurement mode by mode switching algorithm when impedance measurement mode detects abnormal signals. Efficient handling of the real-time data would be available by analyzing location and shape of damage through guided wave measurement.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.315-318
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• 2007

Non-Destructive Health Monitoring using PZT sensors is a major concern and has great significance for research about NDT (Non-Destructive Test). In this paper, we study about the guided wave measurement method using PZT sensors to find cracks and estimate locations. Two aluminum beams bonded with PZT sensors were tested for estimating about the guided wave propagation characteristics and shape of each beam are decided in terms of analytical purpose. NI Signal Acquisition Device and specially designed LabVIEW VI program were used for data acquisition and analysis. The measured data were progressed by using a high-pass filtering.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.58-65
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• 2008

A method to test thin-walled tubes by guided ultrasonic wave is reported. The principle is that applicate two types of axially symmetric ultrasonic tube modes and "longitudinal" modes with particle displacement, which is coupled in axial and radial directions for transverse failures and torsional modes, oscillating in the circumferential direction only, for longitudinal failures. Both types of modes propagate along the tube in the axial direction. Therefore, a pulse-echo technique is possible. The pulses are excited and received at one end of the tube without contact electro-dynamic transducers. As soon as the tubes is put into a transducer coil at one end, the test of the whole tube can be accomplished in a few milliseconds. It is not necessary to rotate and transport the tubes during the test.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.835-851
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• 2015

This paper presents theoretical and experimental evaluation of the structural health monitoring (SHM) capability of piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) at elevated temperatures. This is important because the technologies for structural sensing and monitoring need to account for the thermal effect and compensate for it. Permanently installed PWAS transducers have been One of the extensively employed sensor technologies for in-situ continuous SHM. In this paper, the electro-mechanical impedance spectroscopy (EMIS) method has been utilized as a dynamic descriptor of PWAS behavior and as a high frequency standing wave local modal technique. Another SHM technology utilizes PWAS as far-field transient transducers to excite and detect guided waves propagating through the structure. This paper first presents how the EMIS method is used to qualify and quantify circular PWAS resonators in an increasing temperature environment up to 230 deg C. The piezoelectric material degradation with temperature was investigated and trends of variation with temperature were deduced from experimental measurements. These effects were introduced in a wave propagation simulation software called Wave Form Revealer (WFR). The thermal effects on the substrate material were also considered. Thus, the changes in the propagating guided wave signal at various temperatures could be simulated. The paper ends with summary and conclusions followed by suggestions for further work.