• Computers and Concrete
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.225-234
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• 2009

Dredged silt from reservoirs in southern Taiwan was sintered to make lightweight aggregates (LWA), which were then used to produce lightweight aggregate concrete (LWAC).This study aimed to assess the compressive strength and homogeneity of LWAC using ultrasonic-echo sensing. Concrete specimens were prepared using aggregates of four different particle density, namely 800, 1100, 1300 and 2650 kg/$m^3$. The LWAC specimens were cylindrical and a square wall with core specimens drilled. Besides compressive strength test, ultrasonic-echo sensing was employed to examine the ultrasonic pulse velocity and homogeneity of the wall specimens and to explore the relationship between compressive strength and ultrasonic pulse velocity. Results show that LWA, due to its lower relative density, causes bloating, thus resulting in uneven distribution of aggregates and poor homogeneity. LWAC mixtures using LWA of particle density 1300 kg/$m^3$ show the most even distribution of aggregates and hence best homogeneity as well as highest compressive strength of 63.5 MPa. In addition, measurements obtained using ultrasonic-echo sensing and traditional ultrasonic method show little difference, supporting that ultrasonic-echo sensing can indeed perform non-destructive, fast and accurate assessment of LWAC homogeneity.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.565-582
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• 2008

This paper presents a feasibility study of flexible piezoelectric paint for use in wide-band low-profile surface-mount or embeddable ultrasonic sensor for in situ structural health monitoring. Piezoelectric paint is a piezoelectric composite with 0-3 connectivity. Because of its ease of application, piezoelectric paint can be readily fabricated into sensing element with complex pattern. This study examines the characteristics of piezoelectric paint in acoustic emission signal and ultrasonic guided wave sensing. A series of ultrasonic tests including pitch catch and pencil break tests were performed to validate the ultrasonic wave sensing capability of piezoelectric paint. The results of finite element simulation of ultrasonic wave propagation, and acoustic emission generated by a pencil lead break on an aluminum plate are also presented in this paper along with corresponding experimental data. Based on the preliminary experimental results, the piezoelectric paint appears to offer a promising sensing material for use in real-time monitoring of crack initiation and propagation in both metallic and composite structures.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.321-327
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• 2012

This paper presents a comparative analysis on three different types of performance indices of obstacle detection for an overlapped ultrasonic sensor ring. Due to beam overlap, the entire sensing zone of each ultrasonic sensor can be divided into three smaller sensing subzones, which leads to significant reduction of positional uncertainty in obstacle detection. First, the positional uncertainty in obstacle detection is expressed in terms of the area of a sensing subzone, and type 1 performance index is then defined as the area ratio of side and center sensing subzones. Second, based on the area of a sensing subzone, type 2 performance index is defined taking into account the size of the entire range of obstacle detection as well as the degree of the positional uncertainty in obstacle detection. Third, the positional uncertainty in obstacle detection is now expressed in terms of the length of the uncertainty arc spanning a sensing subzone, and type 3 performance index is then defined as the average value of the uncertainty arc lengths over the entire range of obstacle detection. Fourth, using a commercial low directivity ultrasonic sensor, the changes of three different performance indices depending on the parameter of an overlapped ultrasonic sensor ring are examined and compared.

• International Journal of Safety
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.17-22
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• 2008

Recent developments in contactless, air-coupled sensing of seismic and ultrasonic waves in concrete structures are presented. Contactless sensing allows for rapid, efficient and consistent data collection over a large volume of material. Two inspection applications are discussed: air-coupled impact-echo scanning of concrete structures using seismically generated waves, and air-coupled imaging of internal damages in concrete using ultrasonic tomography. The first application aims to locate and characterize shallow delamination defects within concrete bridge decks. Impact-echo method is applied to scan defected concrete slabs using air coupled sensors. Next, efforts to apply air-coupled ultrasonic tomography to concrete damage imaging are discussed. Preliminary results are presented for air-coupled ultrasonic tomography applied to solid elements to locate internal defects. The results demonstrate that, with continued development, air-coupled ultrasonic tomography may provide improved evaluation of unseen material defects within structures.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.191-201
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• 2016

Coupled structures are widely seen in civil and mechanical engineering. In coupled structures, monitoring the translational motion of its key components is of great importance. For instance, some coupled arms are equipped with a hydraulic piston to provide the stiffness along the piston axial direction. The piston moves back and forth and a distance sensing system is necessary to make sure that the piston is within its stroke limit. The measured motion data also give us insight into how the coupled structure works and provides information for the design optimization. This paper develops two distance sensing systems for coupled structures. The first system measures distance with ultrasonic sensor. It consists of an ultrasonic sensing module, an Arduino interface board and a control computer. The system is then further upgraded to a three-sensor version, which can measure three different sets of distance data at the same time. The three modules are synchronized by the Arduino interface board as well as the self-developed software. Each ultrasonic sensor transmits high frequency ultrasonic waves from its transmitting unit and evaluates the echo received back by the receiving unit. From the measured time interval between sending the signal and receiving the echo, the distance to an object is determined. The second distance sensing system consists of a wire draw encoder, a data collection board and the control computer. Wire draw encoder is an electromechanical device to monitor linear motion by converting a central shaft rotation into electronic pulses of the encoder. Encoder can measure displacement, velocity and acceleration simultaneously and send the measured data to the control computer via the data acquisition board. From experimental results, it is concluded that both the ultrasonic and the wire draw encoder systems can obtain the linear motion of structures in real-time.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.747-752
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• 2008

Fiber-guided sensor system using a generator and a receiver can detect the amplitude of load or pressure. However, this type of sensor can show some difficulties in detecting the location of damages and pressure loadings. To overcome this weakness of this type, the ultrasonic active fiber sensor, which has an integrated ultrasonic generator and sensing part, was developed in this study. By using this sensor system, the location of mechanical loads can be exactly detected. Moreover, the ultrasonic active fiber sensor is more cost-effective than an ultrasonic fiber sensor using two piezoelectric transducers which are used as a generator and a receiver, respectively. Two applications of the ultrasonic active fiber sensor are demonstrated: cure monitoring of lead and measurement of liquid level. Present results showed that the active fiber sensor can be applied for various environmental sensing.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.15-19
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• 2004

In this paper, we present the fabrication and characteristic analysis of Sagnac interferometric optical fiber senior(OFS) system for detecting pulsed ultrasonic signal in underwater. The hollow cylindrical mandrel wound round by single mode optical fiber is used as sensing component. The ultrasonic signal source is simulated by the PZT actuator operated by an function generator. The distance dependency of the OFS's sensitivity was measured. The sensitivity has been shown to be inversely propotional to the square-root of distance between ultrasonic source and sensing component. It has also been shown that the OFS could detect the signals less affected by ultrasonic path comparing to conventional acousto-electric sensor. and accurate location of ultrasonic signal could be carried out using two OFSs.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.285-288
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• 2007

A realization for automatic stock cubic measuring and distributing management embedded system with 3 dimensional ultrasonic sensing is presented in this paper. The height and width of cubic are measured by comparing the 3 values from 3 ultrasonic sensors with reference when an object is passing the conveyer and length is calculated by the passing time and velocity, compensate cubic values for error to vary with the environment temperature, and reduce the error by averaging the sensing data not to be right posture of object. The system enables to classify and load a packed stocks at the store and transportation practically based on the rectangular hexahedral objects.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.4 no.6
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• pp.747-752
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• 1998

Ultrasonic sensors have been widely used to recognize the working environment for a mobile robot. However, their intrinsic problems, such as specular reflection, wide beam angle, and slow propagation velocity, require an excessive number of sensors to be integrated for achieving the sensing goal. This paper proposes a new measurement scheme which uses only two sets of ultrasonic sensors to determine the location and the type of a target surface. By measuring the time difference between the returned signals from the target surface, which are generated by two transmitters with 1 ㎳ difference, it classifies the type and determines the size of the target surface. Since the proposed sensor system uses only two sets of ultrasonic sensors to recognize and localize the target surface, it significantly simplifies the sensing system and reduces the signal processing time so that the working environment can be recognized in real time.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.223-230
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• 2018

This study examines a non-contact laser scanning-based ultrasound system, called an angular scan pulse-echo ultrasonic propagation imager (A-PE-UPI), that uses coincided laser beams for ultrasonic sensing and generation. A laser Doppler vibrometer is used for sensing, while a diode pumped solid state (DPSS) Q-switched laser is used for generation of thermoelastic waves. A high-speed raster scanning of up to 10-kHz is achieved using a galvano-motorized mirror scanner that allows for coincided sensing and for the generation beam to perform two-dimensional scanning without causing any harm to the surface under inspection. This process allows for the visualization of longitudinal wave propagation through-the-thickness. A pulse-echo ultrasonic wave propagation imaging algorithm (PE-UWPI) is used for on-the-fly damage visualization of the structure. The presented system is very effective for high-speed, localized, non-contact, and non-destructive inspection of aerospace structures. The system is tested on an aluminum honeycomb sandwich with disbonds and a carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP) honeycomb sandwich with a layer overlap. Inspection is performed at a 10-kHz scanning speed that takes 16 seconds to scan a $100{\times}100mm^2$ area with a scan interval of 0.25 mm. Finally, a comparison is presented between angular-scanning and a linear-scanning-based pulse-echo UPI system. The results show that the proposed system can successfully visualize defects in the inspected specimens.