• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• 제18권4호
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• pp.816-825
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• 1994

The purpose of this study is to develop the non-destructive material evaluation method of aluminum alloy base metal matrix composite(MMC) by ultrasonics. Five aluminum base MMC specimens were fabricated in which the fractional ratios of fiber were changed from 0% to 31%. Relations among acoustic properties, microstructural features and elastic constant were compared. The ultrasonic velocity method was useful for nondestructive elastic constant measurement of composite materials, since the method had as same accuracy as conventional strain measurement method. Furthermore, velocity, attenuation and backscattering behaviors for each specimen also related to fractional ratio of fiber and these relations could utilize ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation of fiber structure in MMC.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• 제29권10호
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• pp.1430-1437
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• 2005

It is very important to achieve a high reproducibility in the ultrasonic measurement of bone mineral density. In this study, we examined number of sampling waveform, control of temperature, diameter of region of interest as factors to improve reproducibility. We decided the optimal number of waveforms to be converted to frequency domain as period of 1. We have minimized the effects of variable temperature and constrained generation of micro bubble by keeping temperature within a range of $32\pm0.5^{\circ}C$ with a precise temperature controlling algorithm. We also found the optimal diameter of region of interest to be 13mm. In this paper, we demonstrated the improved reproducibility by controlling various factors affecting the ultrasonic measurement of bone mineral density.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• 제53권6호
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• pp.167-173
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• 2016

Compressed Sensing(CS) is the theory that can recover signals which are sampled below the Nyquist sampling rate to original analog signals. In this paper, we propose the estimation algorithm of ultrasonic attenuation coefficients in the frequency domain using CS. While most estimation algorithms transform the time-domain signals into the frequency-domain using the Fourier transform, the proposed method directly utilize the spectral information in the recovery process by the basis matrix without the completely recovered signals in the time domain. We apply three transform bases for sparsifying and estimate the attenuation coefficients using the Centroid Downshift method with Dual-reference diffraction compensation technique. The estimation accuracy and execution time are compared for each basis matrix. Computer simulation results show that the DCT basis matrix exhibits less than 0.35% estimation error for the compressive ratio of 50% and about 6% average error for the compressive ratio of 70%. The proposed method which directly extracts frequency information from the CS signals can be extended to estimating for other ultrasonic parameters in the Quantitative Ultrasound (QUS) Analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• 제26권2호
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• pp.84-89
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• 2006

A laser ultrasonic inspection system is a non-contact inspection device which generates and measures ultrasounds by using laser beams. A laser ultrasonic inspection system provides a high measurement resolution because the ultrasonic signal generated by a pulse laser beam has a wide-band spectrum and the ultrasonic signal is measured from a small focused spot of a measuring laser beam. In this paper, we have investigated the detection techniques of a surface-breaking crack by using the laser ultrasonic surface waves. A crack acts as a low pass filter whose cut-off frequency is lowered in proportion to the depth of a crack. And, the center frequency value of a spectrum is decreased in proportion to the depth of a crack. In this paper, we extracted the crack information by using the frequency attenuation from the normalized transfer function spectrum of a surface-breaking crack. Also, we effectively measured the crack depth by using the decreasing value of the center frequency from a crack passed ultrasonic signal. The proposed measuring techniques of crack depths provided more precise information than the amplitude measuring technique.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• 제14권3호
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• pp.320-330
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• 2000

It is desirable to perform nondestructive evaluation (NDE) to assess material properties and part homogeneity because the manufacturing of carbon/carbon brake disks requires complicated and costly processes. In this work several ultrasonic techniques were applied to carbon/carbon brake disks (322mm ad, 135mm id) for the evaluation of spatial variations in material properties that are attributable to the manufacturing process. In a large carbon/carbon disk manufactured by chemical vapor infiltration (CYI) method, the spatial variation of ultrasonic velocity was measured and found to be consistent with the densification behavior in CYI process. Low frequency (e.g., 1-5MHz) through-transmission scans based on both amplitude and time-of-flight of the ultrasonic pulse were used for mapping out the material property inhomogeneity. Images based on both the amplitude and the time-of-flight of the transmitted ultrasonic pulse showed significant variation in the radial direction. The radial variations in ultrasonic velocity and attenuation were attributed to a density variation caused by the more efficient densification of pitch impregnation near the id and od and by the less efficient densification away from the exposed edged of the disk. Ultrasonic velocities in the edges of the disk. Ultrasonic velocities in the thickness direction were also measured as a function of location using dry-coupling transducers ; the results were consistent with the densification behavior. However, velocities in the in-plane directions (circumferential and radial) seemed to be affected more by the relative contents of fabric and chopped fiber, and less by the void content.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• 제52권3호
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• pp.621-625
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• 2020

Cast austenitic stainless steel (CASS) is used for fabricating different components of the primary reactor coolant system of pressurized water reactors. However, the thermal embrittlement of CASS resulting from long-term operation causes structural safety problems. Ultrasonic testing for flaw detection has been used to assess the thermal embrittlement of CASS; however, the high scattering and attenuation of the ultrasonic wave propagating through CASS make it difficult to accurately quantify the flaw size. In this paper, we present a different approach for evaluating the thermal embrittlement of CASS by assessing changes in the material properties of CASS using a nonlinear ultrasonic technique, which is a potential nondestructive method. For the evaluation, we prepared CF8M specimens that were thermally aged under four different heating conditions. Nonlinear ultrasonic measurements were performed using a contact piezoelectric method to obtain the relative ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter, and a mini-sized tensile test was performed to investigate the correlation of the parameter with material properties. Experimental results showed that the ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter had a correlation with tensile properties such as the tensile strength and elongation. Consequently, we could confirm the applicability of the nonlinear ultrasonic technique to the evaluation of the thermal embrittlement of CASS.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• 제24권8호
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• pp.431-440
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• 2005

The precise measurement of ultrasonic power is important to the qualify assurance and the safety of medical ultrasonic equipments In the Present work, a brier theory was introduced to determine the ultrasonic Power from the time valving balance-indication due to the radiation force acting on an absorbing target and/or other causes such as buoyancy during the repetition of on/off behavior of ultrasonic irradiation. The developed automated system measuring the ultrasonic power was described in detail with the precise mechanical alignment tool , the electric signal generation network, the control and measurement network and the appropriate procedure. The ultrasonic power measured by the developed system was compared to the reference data calibrated by the other national metrology institute at 1 MHz, 5 MHz, 10 MHz, and 15 MHz over the range 10 mW to 10 W. Their relative differences are within $5\%$.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• 제35권2호
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• pp.103-111
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• 2015

The present study investigated the influence of thick cortical endplates on the ultrasonic properties of trabecular bone in a femur with a high fracture risk. Twelve trabecular bone samples were prepared from bovine femurs, and acrylic plates with thicknesses of 1.25, 1.80, and 2.75 mm were manufactured to simulate the cortical endplates using acrylic with a density and a sound speed similar to cortical bone. Although the thickness of the acrylic plates attached to the two sides of the trabecular bone increased, high correlations were observed between the speed of sound and the apparent bone density of the trabecular bone, with Pearson's correlation coefficients of 0.80-0.86. High correlations were also observed between the attenuation coefficient at 0.5 MHz and the apparent bone density of the trabecular bone, with Pearson's correlation coefficients of 0.84-0.91. These results suggest that the speed of sound and attenuation coefficient at a specific frequency measured in a femur with relatively thick cortical endplates compared to the calcaneus could be used as indices for predicting the bone mineral density of the femur.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• 제19권5호
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• pp.41-46
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• 2015

It is known that in aluminum 6061-T6, which is composed of $Mg_2Si$ and ${\beta}-Al_5FeSi$, void nucleation grows around ${\beta}-Al_5FeSi$ of Al606-T6. In this work, growth of voids was checked by scanning a 6061-T6 specimen with SEM observation. The effects of dislocation damping, coherency strain and voids on ultrasonic attenuation and nonlinearity parameters were experimentally measured. It was observed that a nonlinearity parameter increases until 75 percent of fatigue life and decreases after that. From the results, the authors inferred that dislocation damping and coherency damping increase nonlinearity parameters and void nucleation decreases them as ultrasonic scattering increases with void. The application of nonlinearity parameters in estimating degradation of materials with complex microstructures through fatigue process, therefore, should be carefully considered.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• 제20권4호
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• pp.314-321
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• 2000

A gap between a $Al_2O_3/Fe$ thermite and lower head vessel is formed in the lower-plenum arrested vessel attack(LAVA) experiment which is the 1st phase study of simulation of naturally arrested vessel attack in vessel(SONATA-IV). The gap measurement using a conventional ultrasonic method would be lack of a reliability due to the structure complexity and the metallurgical grain size change of the lower head HAZ occurred by a thermite $Al_2O_3/Fe$ melt or a $Al_2O_3$ melt at $2300^{\circ}C$. The grain echoes having false signals and lower S/N ratio signals are detected due to a multiple scattering, a mode conversion and an attenuation of a ultrasonic resulted from at the interface of increased grain size zone. In this test, the signals pattern was classified to understand the behavior of the ultrasonic in a multi-layer specimen of solid-liquid-solid of assuming that the thermite and the lower head vessel is immersed. The polarity threshold algorithm of frequency diversity gives us the enhancement about 6dB of the ratio S/N.