• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제30권5호
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• pp.513-520
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• 2022

During the long-time service of a bolt, its preload may suffer slight perturbations or significant reductions. It is a dilemma to monitor preload changes at high resolution and full scale. Approaches for bolt preload monitoring with multi-resolution should be developed. In this paper, a simple and effective multi-resolution bolt preload monitoring approach using ultrasonic guided waves (UGW) is proposed. A linear relationship between the time-of-flight (TOF) variation of multi-reflected waves and preload is derived to theoretically reveal the multi-resolution properties of UGW. The variations of TOF before and after the slight preload perturbations are extracted by using a global evaluation method. Experimental results show that the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd-reflected UGWs is larger than 20 dB. The resolution of the 2^nd-reflected UGW is higher than that of the 1^st-reflected UGW and lower than that of the 3^rd-reflected UGW. The ultimate detectable resolutions of bolt preload (DRBP) of the 1^st and 3^th-reflected UGWs are 0.9% and 0.5%, respectively. By using the 1^st and 3^th-reflected guided waves, the bolt looseness with different degrees can be monitored simultaneously.

• 비파괴검사학회지
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• 제25권1호
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• pp.20-26
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• 2005

유도초음파는 판, 봉 또는 관과 같은 구조물의 장거리 탐상에 사용되고 있다. 그러나, 유도초음파에는 그 모드가 많고 전파속도가 달라서, 원하는 모드를 선택적으로 발생시키고 수신하는 기법이 유도초음파를 응용하는데 핵심적인 기술 중 하나이다. 본 연구에서는 배열형 탐촉자의 위상을 조절하여 유도초음파를 발생시키는 방법에 대하여 연구하였다. 이를 위하여 8채널 초음파 펄서/리시버, 그리고 각각의 채널을 일정한 시간간격으로 구동할 수 있는 회로를 개발하였다. 8개의 탐촉자를 만들어서 배열형으로 사용하여 유도 초음파를 발생시켰다. 이웃한 요소 탐촉자 사이의 구동시간 간격을 제어하여 이에 맞는 위상속도를 지닌 유도초음파를 선택적으로 발생시켰고, 발생된 유도초음파의 군속도를 측정하였으며, 배열탐촉자에서 수신된 신호를 시간지연을 가지고 합성하여 유도초음파의 모드를 선택적으로 수신하였다. 그 결과, 이웃한 요소 탐촉자 사이의 구동시간 간격을 바꿈으로서 원하는 모드의 유도초음파를 선택적으로 발생시킬 수 있었다.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• 제23권5호
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• pp.43-48
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• 2005

Conventional non-destructive techniques for inspection of the weld in pipelines require significant test time and high cost. Ultrasonic guided waves have been widely studied and successfully applied to various non-destructive tests with advantage of the long-range inspection. In this paper, a study on the application of ultrasonic guided waves to the long-range inspection of the pipeline is presented using a long-range guided wave inspection system, Wavemaker SE16, GUL. The characteristics and setup of the long-range guided wave inspection system and experimental results in pipes of with various diameter are introduced. The experimental results in mock-up pipes with cluster type detects show that the minimum detectable wall thickness reduction with this guided wave system is $2\~3\%$ in the pipe cross section area. And the wall thickness reduction of $5\%$ in cross section area can be detected when actual detection level is used. Therefore, the applicability of the guided wave systeme to long-range inspection of wall thickness reduction in pipes is verified.

• 동력기계공학회지
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• 제14권5호
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• pp.36-40
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• 2010

The ultrasonic guided wave propagates along with the given structure's wall direction. Because of this specific character, the ultrasonic guided waves arc used in many other fields. Especially, it can be readily utilized for nondestructive inspection of various structures that are made up of gas pipes, heat exchanger tubes, and thin plates. Further, the guided wave technology can be readily utilized when inspecting pipes or thin plates which pose high risk of the accident but for which the nondestructive inspection itself is impossible because it is difficult to get to them since they are coated or buried underground. In the other hand, conventional ultrasonic testing such as thickness gauging uses bulk waves and only tests the region of structure immediately below the transducer. As a result of the application about inlet and outlet cooling water line using guided wave test, we conformed that the overall corrosions were in the lower side of the 304.8 mm inlet valve and these corrosions were engaged in not locally but through the lower side of the valve line. In the near future, we can expect that the detectable defect size is smaller than before along with the development of the sensing technology.

• 비파괴검사학회지
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• 제24권4호
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• pp.331-340
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• 2004

기기 건전성의 온라인 검사 및 감시 기술은 기존의 원전의 가동 중 검사의 효율적 수행에 필요한 정보를 제공한다. 유도 초음파는 온라인 검사와 감시에 활용 가능성이 있는 기술 중의 하나로 알려져 있다. 본 연구에서는 온라인 검사 겐 감시 기술 개발의 일환으로 유도초음파를 이용하여 파이프의 건전성을 검사/감시하는 기술을 개발하고자 한다. 이를 위해 증기 발생기 세관을 실험 대상으로 하여 분산 선도 덴 특정 모드에 대응하는 초음파 입사각을 계산하였다. Short time Fourier transform을 이용한 시긴-주파수 분석을 통하여 유도초음파 모드를 확인하였으며, 유도 초음파가 증기발생기 세관의 곡관 부분을 통과할 때 모드 변환이 발생하지 않는 것을 실험적으로 확인하였다. 유도 초음파를 이용한 증기발생기 세관의 최적 검사 모드를 제안하고 실험에 의하여 이를 확인하였다.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제13권4호
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• pp.587-614
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• 2014

In recent years the interest in online monitoring of lightweight structures with ultrasonic guided waves is steadily growing. Especially the aircraft industry is a driving force in the development of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. In order to optimally design SHM systems powerful and efficient numerical simulation tools to predict the behaviour of ultrasonic elastic waves in thin-walled structures are required. It has been shown that in real industrial applications, such as airplane wings or fuselages, conventional linear and quadratic pure displacement finite elements commonly used to model ultrasonic elastic waves quickly reach their limits. The required mesh density, to obtain good quality solutions, results in enormous computational costs when solving the wave propagation problem in the time domain. To resolve this problem different possibilities are available. Analytical methods and higher order finite element method approaches (HO-FEM), like p-FEM, spectral elements, spectral analysis and isogeometric analysis, are among them. Although analytical approaches offer fast and accurate results, they are limited to rather simple geometries. On the other hand, the application of higher order finite element schemes is a computationally demanding task. The drawbacks of both methods can be circumvented if regions of complex geometry are modelled using a HO-FEM approach while the response of the remaining structure is computed utilizing an analytical approach. The objective of the paper is to present an efficient method to couple different HO-FEM schemes with an analytical description of an undisturbed region. Using this hybrid formulation the numerical effort can be drastically reduced. The functionality of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by studying the propagation of ultrasonic guided waves in plates, excited by a piezoelectric patch actuator. The actuator is modelled utilizing higher order coupled field finite elements, whereas the homogenous, isotropic plate is described analytically. The results of this "semi-analytical" approach highlight the opportunities to reduce the numerical effort if closed-form solutions are partially available.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제2권3호
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• pp.253-274
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• 2006

The structural monitoring of multi-wire strands is of importance to prestressed concrete structures and cable-stayed or suspension bridges. This paper addresses the monitoring of strands by ultrasonic guided waves with emphasis on the signal processing and automatic defect classification. The detection of notch-like defects in the strands is based on the reflections of guided waves that are excited and detected by magnetostrictive ultrasonic transducers. The Discrete Wavelet Transform was used to extract damage-sensitive features from the detected signals and to construct a multi-dimensional Damage Index vector. The Damage Index vector was then fed to an Artificial Neural Network to provide the automatic classification of (a) the size of the notch and (b) the location of the notch from the receiving sensor. Following an optimization study of the network, it was determined that five damage-sensitive features provided the best defect classification performance with an overall success rate of 90.8%. It was thus demonstrated that the wavelet-based multidimensional analysis can provide excellent classification performance for notch-type defects in strands.

• 비파괴검사학회지
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• 제22권6호
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• pp.589-598
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• 2002

The safe operation of petrochemical plant requires screening of the pipework to ensure that there are no unacceptable levels of corrosion. Unfortunately, each plant has many thousands of metres of pipe, much of which is insulated or inaccessible. Conventional methods such as visual inspection and ultrasonic thickness gauging require access to each point of the pipe which is time consuming and very expensive to achieve. Extensional or torsional ultrasonic guided waves in the pipe wall provide an attractive solution to this problem because they can be excited at one location on the pipe and will propagate many metres along the pipe, returning echoes indicating the presence of corrosion or other pipe features. Guided Ultrasonics Ltd have now commercialised the technique and this paper describes the basis of the method, together with examples of practical test results and typical application areas.

• 비파괴검사학회지
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• 제29권2호
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• pp.114-121
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• 2009

유도초음파는 현재 산업설비의 배관 등 장거리 탐상에 널리 사용되고 있으며, 특히, 길이가 수백 미터에서 수 km에 달하는 가스 배관의 검사를 위하여 다수의 탐촉자를 이용한 배열 유도초음파 기술의 개발 및 적용이 확대되고 있다. 따라서, 본 연구에서는, 배관의 원거리 검사능 및 정밀도 향상을 위하여 배열 유도초음파의 집속 알고리즘을 개발하였으며, 개발 알고리즘의 성능을 개발 배열 초음파 시스템을 이용한 실험을 통하여 검증하였다. 그 결과 집속 알고리즘을 적용한 배열 유도초음파의 신호대 잡음비(SNR : signal to noise ratio)가 집속 알고리즘을 적용하지 않은 경우에 비해 향상됨을 알 수 있었다.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• 제1권4호
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• pp.297-309
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• 2012

As a result of the medium coupling, propagation characteristics of ultrasonic waves guided by a multi-phase medium can be different from those in a homogeneous system. This phenomenon becomes prominent for a medium consisting of phases with considerably distinct material and physical properties (e.g., submerged structures or human bones covered with soft tissues). In this study, the coupling effect arising from both fluid and soft tissues on wave propagation in engineering structures and human bone phantoms, respectively, was explored and calibrated quantitatively, with a purpose of enhancing the precision of ultrasonic-wave-based non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and clinical quantitative ultrasound (QUS). Calibration results were used to rectify conventional NDE during evaluation of corrosion in a submerged aluminium plate, and QUS during prediction of simulated healing status of a mimicked bone fracture. The results demonstrated that with the coupling effect being appropriately taken into account, the precision of NDE and QUS could be improved.