• Computers and Concrete
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• 제6권3호
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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.

• International Journal of Safety
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• 제7권2호
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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.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제22권2호
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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.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• 제29권2호
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• pp.301-309
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• 2022

Protective coatings are most widely used anticorrosive structures for steel structures. The corrosion under the coating damages the host material, but this damage is completely hidden. Therefore, a field-applicable under-coating-corrosion visualization method has been desired for a long time. Laser ultrasonic technology has been studied in various fields as an in situ nondestructive inspection method. In this study, a comparative analysis was carried out between a guided-wave ultrasonic propagation imager (UPI) and pulse-echo UPI, which have the potential to be used in the field of under-coating-corrosion management. Both guided-wave UPI and pulse-echo UPI were able to successfully visualize the corrosion. Regarding the field application, the guided-wave UPI performing Q-switch laser scanning and piezoelectric sensing by magnetic attachment exhibited advantages owing to the larger distance and incident angle in the laser measurement than those of the pulse-echo UPI. Regarding the corrosion visualization methods, the combination of adjacent wave subtraction and variable time window amplitude mapping (VTWAM) provided acceptable results for the guided-wave UPI, while VTWAM was sufficient for the pule-echo UPI. In addition, the capability of multiple sensing in a single channel of the guided-wave UPI could improve the field applicability as well as the relatively smaller size of the system. Thus, we propose a guided-wave UPI as a tool for under-coating-corrosion management.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• 제5권2호
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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.

• Composites Research
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• 제29권5호
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• pp.288-292
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• 2016

본 연구에서는 전영역 초음파전파영상화 시스템이라 불리는 새로운 초음파전파영상화 장치를 소개한다. 본 시스템은 비파괴적으로 구조를 2 축 선형 이동 스테이지 기반으로 검사한다. 일치된 초음파 센싱과 가진 레이저 빔이 구조를 스캔하며 동시에 펄스-에코 모드 레이저 초음파를 수집한다. 이 과정은 스캔영역만큼 큰 두께 방향의 전영역 초음파를 생성하는 것을 가능하도록 한다. 본 시스템을 사용하여 실제로 운용 중인 알루미늄 허니콤 구조 기반의 CN-235의 도색된 샌드위치 조종면를 검사 및 평가하고 구조 검사 결과로써 전영역 초음파전파 영상을 소개하였으며 기존 초음파 탐상 기법의 결과와 비교하여 성능 및 민감도를 검증하였다.

• 비파괴검사학회지
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• 제36권2호
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• pp.138-148
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• 2016

Measurement of elastic constants is crucial for engineering aspects of predicting the behavior of materials under load as well as structural health monitoring of material degradation. Ultrasonic velocity measurement for material properties has been broadly used as a nondestructive evaluation method for material characterization. In particular, pulse-echo method has been extensively utilized as it is not only simple but also effective when only one side of the inspected objects is accessible. However, the conventional technique in this approach measures longitudinal and shear waves individually to obtain their velocities. This produces a set of two data for each measurement. This paper proposes a simultaneous sensing system of longitudinal waves and shear waves for elastic constant measurement. The proposed system senses both these waves simultaneously as a single overlapped signal, which is then analyzed to calculate both the ultrasonic velocities for obtaining elastic constants. Therefore, this system requires just half the number of data to obtain elastic constants compared to the conventional individual measurement. The results of the proposed simultaneous measurement had smaller standard deviations than those in the individual measurement. These results validate that the proposed approach improves the efficiency and reliability of ultrasonic elastic constant measurement by reducing the complexity of the measurement system, its operating procedures, and the number of data.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 제어로봇시스템학회 1996년도 Proceedings of the Korea Automatic Control Conference, 11th (KACC); Pohang, Korea; 24-26 Oct. 1996
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• pp.409-412
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• 1996

Ultrasonic sensors are widely used in various applications due to advantages of low cost, simplicity in construction, mechanical robustness, and little environmental restriction in usage. But the main purposes of the noncontact sensing are rather narrowly confined within object detection and distance measurement. For the application of object recognition, ultrasonic sensors exhibit several shortcomings of poor directionality which results in low spatial resolution of objects, and specularity which gives frequent erroneous range readings. To resolve these problems in object recognition, an array of the sensor has been used. To improve the spatial resolution, more number of sensors are used in essence throughout the various devices of the sensor arrays. Under the disguise of a fixed number of the sensors, the array can be shifted mechanically in several steps. In this paper we propose a practical sensor resolution enhancement method using an electronic circuit accompanying the sensor array. The circuit changes the transmitter output voltage in several steps. Using the known sensor characteristics, a set of different return echo signals provide enhanced spatial resolution. The improvement is obtained with neither the cost of the increased number of the sensors nor extra mechanical devices.

• 대한전자공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전자공학회 1998년도 하계종합학술대회논문집
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• pp.271-274
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• 1998

Ultrasonic sensors are becoming indispensable components in every sector of automation equipments due to many advantages. But the main purposes of the noncontact sensing device are rather narrowly confined within object detection and distance measurement. To widen the realm of the applications to object recognition, ultrasonic sensors need to improve the recognition resolution to a certain amount. To resolve the problem of spatial resolution restriction, an increased number of the sensors in the forms of a linear array or 2-dimensional array of the sensor has been used. Also better resolution has been obtained by shifting the array in several steps using mechanical actuators. For an object recognition using ultrasonic sensors, measurements of distance, shift, oblique angle in certain ranges should be obtained. But a little attention has been paid to the measurement of angles. In this paper we propose a practical method for an object angular value detection in addition to distance measurement in ultrasonic sensor array system with little additional hardware burden. Using the established measurement look-up table for the variations of distance, shift, angle and transmitter voltages for each sensor characteristics, a set of different return echo signals for adjacent receivers are processed to provide enhanced angular value reading for an object.