• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.171-188
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• 2006

This paper deals with damage detection using active Lamb waves. The wavelet transform and empirical mode decomposition methods are discussed for measuring the Lamb wave's arrival time of the group velocity. An experimental system to diagnose the damage in the composite plate is developed. A method to optimize this system is also given for practical applications of active Lamb waves, which involve optimal arrangement of the piezoelectric elements to produce single mode Lamb waves. In the paper, the single mode Lamb wave means that there exists no overlapping among different Lamb wave modes and the original Lamb wave signal with the boundary reflection signals. Based on this optimized PZT arrangement method, five damage localizations on different plates are completed and the results using wavelet transform and empirical mode decomposition methods are compared.

• Composites Research
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.46-51
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• 2005

An active inspection system using Lamb waves for structural health monitoring was considered in this paper. In order to understand the characteristics of the Lamb waves propagating in a composite plate, the experiment was performed for a quasi-isotropic composite plate with thickness variation. Lamb waves were generated and received by the thin PZT transducers bonded on the surface. In this test, a simple new technique was tried for characterizing the Lamb waves propagating across the discontinuity due to the thickness variation. The results showed that Lamb waves were more sensitive to the thinner plate with faster group velocity and that the thickness change in composite plate was detectable. Consequently, the potential of applying this technique to structural health monitoring was verified.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.1120-1131
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• 2011

Researches using time reversal acoustics(TRA) for impact localization have been paid attention to recently. Dispersion characteristics of Lamb waves, which restrict the utility of classical nondestructive evaluation based on time-of-flight information, can be compensated through the application of TRA to Lamb waves on a plate. This study investigates the spatial focusing performance of time reversal Lamb waves on a plate using finite element analysis. In particular, the virtual sensor effect caused by multiple wave reflections at the boundaries of a plate is shown to enable the spatial focusing of Lamb waves though a very small number of surface-bonded piezoelectric(PZT) sensors are available. The time window size of forward response signals, are normalized with respect to the number of virtual active sensors. Then their effects on the spatial focusing performance of Lamb waves are investigated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2011.10a
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• pp.418-429
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• 2011

Researches using time reversal acoustics (TRA) for impact localization have been paid attention to recently. Dispersion characteristics of Lamb waves, which restrict the utility of classical nondestructive evaluation based on time-of-flight information, can be compensated through the application of TRA to Lamb waves on a plate. This study investigates the spatial focusing performance of time reversal Lamb waves on a plate using finite element analysis. In particular, the virtual sensor effect caused by multiple wave reflections at the boundaries of the plate is shown to enable the spatial focusing of Lamb waves though a very small number of surface-bonded piezoelectric (PZT) sensors are available. The time window size of forward response signals, are normalized with respect to the number of virtual active sensors. Then their effects on the spatial focusing performance of Lamb waves are investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.59-63
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• 2008

Time reversal (TR) of nondispersive body waves has been used in many applications including ultrasonic NDE. However, the study of the TR method for Lamb waves on thin structures is not well established. In this paper, the full reconstruction of the input signal is investigated for dispersive Lamb waves by introducing a time reversal operator based on the Mindlin plate theory. A broadband and a narrowband input waveform are employed to reconstruct the $A_0$ mode of Lamb wave propagations. Due to the frequency dependence of the TR process of Lamb waves, different frequency components of the broadband excitation are scaled differently during the time reversal process and the original input signal cannot be fully restored. This is the primary reason for using a narrowband excitation to enhance the flaw detectability.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.429-436
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• 2004

For the in-situ health monitoring of critical members in civil infra-structures, ultrasonic guided Lamb waves-based non-destructive evaluation (NDE) is very suitable. However, a chief drawback of the Lamb wave techniques is that multiple modes exist at all frequencies and the modes are generally dispersive, which means that the received signals may be very complicated. To overcome these complications, selective transmitting and receiving of a single A/sub 0/ mode within a frequency range can be adopted. Furthermore, a wavelet technique can be utilized to decompose the Lamb wave response into wavelet coefficients as a tool for signal processing. The changes in the Lamb waves interacting with damages in the steel plates are successfully characterized by this wavelet technique, through the amplitude change of the wavelet coefficients. In this paper, the feasibility of detecting a line crack on the surface of a steel plate and loosened bolts in a joint steel specimen using the Lamb waves and the wavelet technique is investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.637-642
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• 2002

An arc-shaped line array slit has been used for the laser generation of focused Lamb waves. The spatially expanded Nd:YAG pulse laser was illuminated through the arc-shaped line array slit on the surface of a sample plate to generate the Lamb waves of the same pattern as the slit. Then the generated Lamb waves were focused at the focal point of which distance from the slit position is dependent on the curvature of slit arc. The proposed method showed better spatial resolution than the conventional linear array slit in the detection of laser machined linear defect and drill machined circular defect on aluminum plates of 2mm thickness. Using the focused waves, we could detect the linear defect and the circular defect with the improvement of spatial resolution. The method can also be combined with the scanning mechanism to get an image just like by the scanning acoustic microscope(SAM).

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.15 no.1 s.94
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• pp.53-62
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• 2005

This study presents the NDE (non-destructive evaluation) technique for detecting the loosened bolts on joint steel structures on the basis of TOF (time of flight) and amplitudes of Lamb waves. Probabilistic neural network (PNN) technique which is an effective tool for pattern classification problem was applied to the damage estimation using PZT induced Lamb waves. Two kinds of damages were introduced by dominant damages (DD) which mean loosened bolts within the Lamb waves beam width and minor damages (MD) which mean loosened bolts out of the Lamb waves beam width. They were investigated for the establishment of the optimal decision boundaries which divide each damage class's region including the intact class. In this study, the applicability of the probabilistic neural networks was identified through the test results for the damage cases within and out of wave beam path. It has been found that the present methods are very efficient and reasonable in predicting the loosened bolts on the joint steel structures probabilistically.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2004.11a
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• pp.625-632
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• 2004

This study presents the NDE (non-destructive evaluation) technique for detecting the loosened bolts on joint steel structures on the basis of TOF (time of flight) and amplitudes of Lamb waves. Probabilistic neural network (PNN) technique which is an effective tool for pattern classification problem was applied to the damage estimation using PZT induced Lamb waves. Two kinds of damages were introduced by dominant damages (DD) which mean loosened bolts within the Lamb waves beam width and minor damages (MD) which mean loosened bolts out of the Lamb waves beam width. They were investigated for the establishment of the optimal decision boundaries which divide each damage class's region including the intact class. In this study, the applicability of the probabilistic neural networks was identified through the test results for the damage cases within and out of wave beam path. It has been found that the present methods are very efficient and reasonable in predicting the loosened bolts on the joint steel structures probabilistically.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.553-567
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• 2011

During the last three years, the possibility of the time reversal Lamb waves has been paid attention to for structural health monitoring of a plate. This study proposes a numerical scheme which can simulate the spatial focusing of time reversal Lamb waves on a rectangular plate. In this scheme, a time reversal process is formulated in the frequency domain using active virtual sensors being equivalent to the mirror effects of an actual sensor due to wave reflection on the plate boundary. Forward and backward Lamb wave propagations are represented by scalar functions for simulating the spatial focusing of time reversal Lamb waves. The validity of the proposed scheme is demonstrated through the comparison to the results of finite element analysis in which the spatial focusing of time reversal Lamb waves is realized by wafer-type piezoelectric(PZT) transducers collocated on a rectangular plate.