• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2012.10a
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• pp.663-664
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• 2012

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.441-451
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• 2023

Ultrasound transducers are an essential component of combined photoacoustic and ultrasound imaging systems and play an important role in image evaluation. However, ultrasound transducers are opaque; therefore, light must bypass the ultrasound transducer to reach the target point to produce a photoacoustic image. Providing different paths for the optical and acoustic signals results in a complicated system design, increasing the system volume. To overcome these problems, an optically Transparent Ultrasound Transducer (TUT) was developed. Unlike conventional opaque ultrasound transducers, optically TUT can be fabricated by a variety of manufacturing methods and they are suitable for use with specific piezoelectric elements and serve various purposes. In this study, a comparative analysis of the results of using Lithium Niobate (LNO), Lead Magnesium Niobate-Lead Titanate (PMN-PT), and Polyvinylidene Difluoride (PVDF), which are materials used in piezoelectric element-based TUT. LNO is a piezoelectric element widely used in TUT, and PMN-PT has been actively studied recently with a higher transmission and reception rate than LNO. Existing TUT have lower ultrasound resolution than photoacoustic resolution, but they have recently been manufacturing focused TUT with high ultrasound resolution using PVDF. A comparative analysis of the production results of these TUT was performed.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.761-776
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• 2018

Guided wave testing is a reliable and safe method for pipeline inspection. In general, guided wave testing employs a circumferential array of piezoelectric transducers to clamp on the pipe circumference. The sensitivity of the operation depends on many factors, including transducer distribution across the circumferential array. This paper presents the sensitivity analysis of transducer array for the circumferential characteristics of guided waves in a pipe using finite element modelling and experimental studies. Various cases are investigated for the outputs of guided waves in the numerical simulations, including the number of transducers per array, transducer excitation variability and variations in transducer spacing. The effect of the dimensions of simulated notches in the pipe is also investigated for different arrangements of the transducer array. The results from the finite element numerical simulations are then compared with the related experimental results. Results show that the numerical outputs agree well with the experimental data, and the guided wave mode T(0,1) presents high sensitivity to the notch size in the circumferential direction, but low sensitivity to the notch size in the axial direction.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.73-79
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• 1995

Most of conventional ultrasonic transducers are constructed to generate either longitudinal or shear waves, but not both of them. We investigated the mechanism of dual mode transducers that generates both of the longitudinal and shear waves simultaneously with a single PZT element. A piezoelectric ceramic PZT has the hexagonal 6mm crystal symmetry, after poling. We studied the performance of a PZT element as a function of its rotation angle so that its efficiency is optimized to excite the two waves equally strongly. The results are verified by checking the impedance variation of the element with Finite Element Methods, and checking the wave form by pulse-echo test simulation. Validity of the theoretical calculation is verified through experiments.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.1132-1141
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• 2019

Steel-concrete-steel (SCS) sandwich structures have important advantages over conventional concrete structures, however, bond-slip between the steel plate and concrete may lead to a loss of composite action, resulting in a reduction of stiffness and fatigue life of SCS sandwich structures. Due to the inaccessibility and invisibility of the interface, the interfacial performance monitoring and debonding detection using traditional measurement methods, such as relative displacement between the steel plate and core concrete, have proved challenging. In this work, two methods using piezoelectric transducers are proposed to detect the bond-slip between steel plate and core concrete during the test of the beam. The first one is acoustic emission (AE) method, which can detect the dynamic process of bond-slip. AE signals can be detected when initial micro cracks form and indicate the damage severity, types and locations. The second is electromechanical impedance (EMI) method, which can be used to evaluate the damage due to bond-slip through comparing with the reference data in static state, even if the bond-slip is invisible and suspends. In this work, the experiment is implemented to demonstrate the bond-slip monitoring using above methods. Experimental results and further analysis show the validity and unique advantage of the proposed methods.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.341-359
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• 2019

Non-monolithic concrete structural connections are commonly used both in new constructions and retrofitted structures where anchors are used for connections. Often, flaws are present in anchor system due to poor workmanship and deterioration; and methods available to check the quality of the composite system afterward are very limited. In case of presence of flaw, load transfer mechanism inside the anchor system is severely disturbed, and the load carrying capacity drops drastically. This raises the question of safety of the entire structural system. The present study proposes a wave propagation technique to assess the integrity of the anchor system. A chemical anchor (embedded in concrete) composite system comprising of three materials viz., steel (anchor), polymer (adhesive) and concrete (base) is considered for carrying out the wave propagation studies. Piezoelectric transducers (PZTs) affixed to the anchor head is used for actuation and the PZTs affixed to the surrounding concrete surface of the concrete-anchor system are used for sensing the propagated wave through the anchor interface to concrete. Experimentally validated finite element model is used to investigate three types of composite chemical anchor systems. Studies on the influence of geometry, material properties of the medium and their distribution, and the flaw types on the wave signals are carried out. Temporal energy of through time domain differentiation is found as a promising technique for identifying the flaws in the multi-layered composite system. The present study shows a unique procedure for monitoring of inaccessible but crucial locations of structures by using wave signals without baseline information.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.14-20
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• 2003

Piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers for high temperature contact measurement were developed. These high temperature ultrasonic transducers (HTUT) consisted of bismuth titanate piezoceramic element whose Curie temperature is higher than $600^{\circ}C$, a backing material of the mixture of tungsten powder and inorganic binder, an inner alumina tube, a wear Plate and a housing. The operational frequencies or the HTUT were 1.04 and 2.08 MHz, respectively. Various commercially available couplants for high temperature were evaluated and compared. As a couplant for high temperature ultrasonic testing between HTUT and test specimen, gold epoxy was selected. The peak amplitude of pulse-echo signals from steel test specimen decreased with increasing temperature. The operational temperature of the HTUT reached up to $500^{\circ}C$ at which the continuous contact measurement was possible.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1997.10a
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• pp.265-271
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• 1997

A bond graph modeling approach which is equivalent to a finite element method is formulated in the case of the piezoelectric thickness vibrator. This formulation suggests a new definition of the generalized displacements for a continuous system as well as the piezoelectric thickness vibrator. The newly defined coordinates are illustrated to be easily interpreted physically and easily used in analysis of the system performance. Compared to the Mason equivalent circuit model, the bond graph model offers the primary advantage of physical realizability. Compared to circuit models based on standard discrete electrical elements, the main advantage of the bond graph model is a greater physical accuracy because of the use of multiport energic elements. While results are presented here for the thickness vibrator, the modeling method presented is general in scope and can be applied to arbitrary physical systems.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.268-272
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• 2013

The aim of this study was to develop an ultrasonic tooth-whitening apparatus using piezoelectric transducers, which enhance bleaching efficiency by applying ultrasound, while performing a teeth whitening procedure. For this purpose, an ultrasonic transducer was designed and manufactured, and the effects of reduction in the whitening material's concentration and in the whitening treatment time through using the ultrasound cavitation phenomenon were confirmed. Also, the validity of this study was investigated by comparing the whitening performance with a commercialized optical whitener, through color comparison. The results revealed that the ultrasound whitener produced color values that were enhanced by as much as double that of the conventional LED light whitening method. Even when the operational time was reduced by half, the ultrasound method showed superior performance by over 54% compared to the conventional light whitener, revealing that the ultrasound method showed a remarkable treatment reduction effect.

• Journal of KSNVE
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.577-583
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• 1995

The sandwich type piezoelectric resonator is widely used for the acoustic sources of underwater acoustic transducers, whose important design parameters are shapes, materials, dimensions and supporting methods. Practical design method of resonators consists of manufacturing, experiments and modification so that it requires much time and expenses. In this study, an analytical design method of sandwich type piezoelectric resonators is presented based on the nonlinear optimization technique. The proposed method is applied to the design of an example resonator model in order to maximize the output powers. For the investigation of performance according to the division and their electrical connection, three types of resonators are manufactured. In addition, their dynamic characteristics such as electrical admittance and transmitting voltage response are measured and compared.