• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.795-817
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• 2016

A non-contact, in-situ and non-invasive technique for health monitoring of submerged fiber reinforced polymers (FRP) laminates has been developed using ultrasonic guided waves. A pair of mobile transducers at specific angles of incidence to the submerged FRP specimen was used to excite Lamb wave modes. Lamb wave modes were used for comprehensive inspection of various types of manufacturing defects like air gaps and missing epoxy, introduced during manufacturing of FRP using Vacuum Assisted Resin Infusion Molding (VARIM). Further service induced damages like notches and surface defects were also studied and evaluated using guided waves. Quantitative evaluation of transmitted ultrasonic signal in defect ridden FRPs $vis-{\grave{a}}-vis$ healthy signal has been used to relate the extent of damage in FRPs. The developed technique has the potential to develop into a quick, real time health monitoring tool for judging the service worthiness of FRPs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.615-618
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• 2004

For successful guided-wave damage inspection, the appropriate signal processing of measured wave signals is very important. The objective of this paper is to introduce an efficient signal processing technique especially suitable for the guided-waves used for damage detection. The key idea of this technique is to model guided-waves by chirp functions of special form considering the dispersion phenomenon. To determine the parameter of the chirp functions simulating guided-waves, the matching pursuit algorithm is employed. The damage information in waveguides can be extracted by pulse-characterizing parameters. The effectiveness of present method is checked with the longitudinal wave-based damage inspection.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.525-533
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• 2009

Emphasis in the paper is placed on describing guided wave successes and challenges for applications in aircraft and composite materials inspection. Guided wave imaging methods discussed includes line of sight, tomography, guided wave C-scan, phased array, and ultrasonic vibration methods. Applications outlined encircles lap splice, bonded repair patch, fuselage corrosion, water loaded structures, delamination, and ice detection and de-icing of various structures.

• 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 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.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.20 no.2 s.69
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• pp.8-15
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• 2006

Guided-waves-based mortar-filled steel pipe inspection is carried out through using EMAT (Electro magnetic acoustic transducer) and wavelet transform. Possibly existing anomalies such as separation (or void) and inclusion are made in the fabricated mortar-fled steel pipes: these anomalies are infected. Since guided waves have the long range inspection capability, EMAT has its own advantages over the conventional PZT (Piezoelectric zirconate titanate), and wavelet transform gives the multi-resolution on time-frequency domain results, the suggested technique gives an alternative way for inspecting mortar-filled steel pipes, which are popularly used for supporting marine structures such as piers, wharfs, moles, and dolphins. Through this study, it is show that the suggested technique is promising for detecting the amounts of separations and inclusions.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2013.10a
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• pp.757-762
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• 2013

A technique is presented that uses a new guided wave technique 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.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.481-493
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• 2018

Ultrasonic guided waves have attracted increasing attention for non-destructive testing (NDT) and structural health monitoring (SHM) of bridge cables. They offer advantages like single measurement, wide coverage of acoustical field, and long-range propagation capability. To design defect detection systems, it is essential to understand how guided waves propagate in cables and how to select the optimal excitation frequency and mode. However, certain cable characteristics such as multiple wires, anchorage, and polyethylene (PE) sheath increase the complexity in analyzing the guided wave propagation. In this study, guided wave modes for multi-wire bridge cables are identified by using a semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) technique to obtain relevant dispersion curves. Numerical results indicated that the number of guided wave modes increases, the length of the flat region with a low frequency of L(0,1) mode becomes shorter, and the cutoff frequency for high order longitudinal wave modes becomes lower, as the number of steel wires in a cable increases. These findings were used in design of transducers for defect detection and selection of the optimal wave mode and frequency for subsequent experiments. A magnetostrictive transducer system was used to excite and detect the guided waves. The applicability of the proposed approach for detecting and locating wire breakages was demonstrated for a cable with 37 wires. The present ultrasonic guided wave method has been found to be very responsive to the number of brokenwires and is thus capable of detecting defects with varying sizes.