Journal Articles

This paper presents the interaction of Lamb waves with rivet hole cracks from multiple directions of incident using the finite element approach. Lamb waves undergo scattering and mode conversion after interacting with the damage. Shear horizontal waves appear in the scattered waves because of the mode conversion. Instead of analyzing the whole large structure, the local damage area is analyzed using finite element analyses and analytical formulation is used to analyze the whole structure. The scatter fields are described in terms of wave damage interaction coefficients that involve scattering and mode conversion of Lamb waves. Lamb wave mode (S0 and A0) hit the damage from multiple directions and corresponding wave damage interaction coefficients are obtained around the damage. Harmonic analysis has been performed over the fundamental frequency domain and “scatter cubes” of complex-valued wave damage interaction coefficients are formed. The scatter cube provides the information of relative amplitude and phase of scattered waves around the damage that can be used for designing the sensor installation. An application based on real time domain signal has been illustrated for the problem of multiple-rivet-hole cracks using the scatter cubes with the analytical framework.

Multiple approaches and programs are available to the public to predict ultrasonic guided-wave propagation dispersion curves in a material. Each approach and program will have its own advantage and disadvantage making it suitable for a specific end use and less suitable for others. This manuscript aims to compare three different guided-ultrasonic wave dispersion curves retrieval methods for multiple cases. First a single layer of isotropic, unidirectional, orthotropic and monoclinic material is examined, followed by a multi-layer case (consisting of 10 layers of the aforementioned materials) and finally four different laminates and one sandwich laminate are evaluated. The goal of this manuscript is to give a concise overview of the advantages and limitations of each approach to assist the end user in choosing the right program to use.

In this study, we focus on analyzing the acoustic emission waveforms of the fatigue crack growth despite the conventional statistics-based analysis of acoustic emission. The acoustic emission monitoring technique is a well-known approach in the non-destructive evaluation/structural health monitoring research field. The growth of the fatigue crack causes the acoustic emission in the material that propagates in the structure. The acoustic emission happens not only from the crack growth but also from the interaction of the crack tips during the fatigue loading in the structure. The acoustic emission waveforms are generated from the acoustic emission events; they propagate and create local vibration modes along the crack faces (crack resonance). In-situ fatigue and acoustic emission experiments were conducted to monitor the acoustic emission waveforms from the fatigue cracks. Several test specimens were used in the fatigue experiments, and corresponding acoustic emission waveforms were captured. The acoustic emission waveforms were analyzed and distinguished into three types based on the similar nature in both time and frequency domains. Three-dimensional harmonic finite element analyses were performed to identify the local vibration modes. The local crack resonance phenomenon has been observed from the finite element simulation that could potentially give the geometric information of the crack. The laser Doppler vibrometry experiment was performed to identify the crack resonance phenomenon, and the experimental results were used to verify the simulated results.

This paper presents a study to understand the physical nature of fatigue crack growth as an acoustic emission source and detectability of the crack length form the recorded acoustic emission signal in plate structures. For most of the thin walled engineering structures, the acoustic emission detection through sensor network has been well established. However, the majority of the research is focused on prediction of the acoustic emission due to fatigue crack growth using stochastic methods. Where, stochastic models are used to predict the criticality of the damage. The scope of this research is to use predictive simulation method for acoustic emission signals and extract the damage related information from acoustic emission signals based on physics of material. This approach is in contrast with the traditional approach involving statistics of acoustic emissions and their relation with damage criticality. In this article, first, we present our approach to understand fatigue crack growth as source of acoustic emission using physics of guided wave propagation in FEM. Then, using this physical understanding, we present our investigation on detectability of crack lengths directly from crack-generated acoustic emission signals. Finally, we present our method to extract fatigue crack length information from acoustic emission signals recorded during fatigue crack growth.

This paper presents an experimental and analytical study of irreversible change in piezoelectric wafer active sensor (PWAS) electromechanical (E/M) impedance and admittance signature under high temperature exposure. After elevated to high temperatures, change in the material properties of PWAS can be quantified through irreversible changes in its E/M impedance and admittance signature. For the experimental study, circular PWAS transducers were exposed to temperatures between 50 °C and 250 °C at 50 °C intervals. E/M impedance and admittance data were obtained before and after each heating cycle. Irreversible temperature sensitivity of PWAS resonance and anti-resonance frequency was estimated as 0.0246 kHz °C⁻¹ and 0.0327 kHz °C⁻¹ respectively. PWAS transducer material properties relevant to impedance or admittance signature such as dielectric constant, dielectric loss factor, mechanical loss factor, and in plane piezoelectric constant were determined experimentally at room temperature before and after the elevated temperature tests. The in-plane piezoelectric coefficient was measured by using optical-fiber strain transducer system. It was found that the dielectric constant and in-plane piezoelectric coefficient increased linearly with temperature. Dielectric loss also increases with temperature but remains within 0.2% of initial room temperature value. Change in dielectric properties and piezoelectric constant may be explained by depinning of domains or by domain wall motion. The piezoelectric material degradation was investigated microstructurally and crystallographically by using scanning electron microscope and x-ray diffraction method respectively. There were no noticeable changes in microstructure, crystal structure, unit cell dimension, or symmetry. The degraded PWAS material properties were determined by matching impedance and admittance spectrums from experimental results with a closed form circular PWAS analytical model. Analytical results showed that impedance and admittance strongly depend on elastic coefficient, dielectric constant, mechanical loss factor, dielectric loss tangent and in plane piezoelectric constant. These properties were found to be susceptible to change after high temperature exposure.

A key longstanding objective of the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) research community is to enable the embedment of SHM systems in high value assets like aircraft to provide on-demand damage detection and evaluation. As against traditional non-destructive inspection hardware, embedded SHM systems must be compact, lightweight, low-power and sufficiently robust to survive exposure to severe in-flight operating conditions. Typical Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) systems can be bulky, costly and are often inflexible in their configuration and/or scalability, which militates against in-service deployment. Advances in electronics have resulted in ever smaller, cheaper and more reliable components that facilitate the development of compact and robust embedded SHM systems, including for Acousto-Ultrasonics (AU), a guided plate-wave inspection modality that has attracted strong interest due mainly to its capacity to furnish wide-area diagnostic coverage with a relatively low sensor density. This article provides a detailed description of the development, testing and demonstration of a new AU interrogation system called the Acousto Ultrasonic Structural health monitoring Array Module+ (AUSAM+). This system provides independent actuation and sensing on four Piezoelectric Wafer Active Sensor (PWAS) elements with further sensing on four Positive Intrinsic Negative (PIN) photodiodes for intensity-based interrogation of Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG). The paper details the development of a novel piezoelectric excitation amplifier, which, in conjunction with flexible acquisition-system architecture, seamlessly provides electromechanical impedance spectroscopy for PWAS diagnostics over the full instrument bandwidth of 50 KHz–5 MHz. The AUSAM+ functionality is accessed via a simple hardware object providing a myriad of custom software interfaces that can be adapted to suit the specific requirements of each individual application.

Piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) are commonly used for detecting Lamb waves for structural health monitoring application. However, in most applications of active sensing, the signals are of high-amplitude and easy to detect. In this article, we have shown a new avenue of using the PWAS transducer for detecting the low-amplitude fatigue-crack related acoustic emission (AE) signals. Multiphysics finite element (FE) simulations were performed with two PWAS transducers bonded to the structure. Various configurations of the sensors were studied by using the simulations. One PWAS was placed near to the fatigue-crack and the other one was placed at a certain distance from the crack. The simulated AE event was generated at the crack tip. The simulation results showed that both PWAS transducers were capable of sensing the AE signals. To validate the multiphysics simulation results, an in-situ AE-fatigue experiment was performed. Two PWAS transducers were bonded to the thin aerospace test coupon. The fatigue crack was generated in the test coupon which had produced low-amplitude acoustic waves. The low-amplitude fatigue-crack related AE signals were successfully captured by the PWAS transducers. The distance effect on the captured AE signals was also studied. It has been shown that some high-frequency contents of the AE signal have developed as they travel away from the crack.

In this article, the effect of the acoustic emission sensor on the acoustic emission waveforms from fatigue crack growth in a thin aerospace specimen is presented. In situ acoustic emission fatigue experiments were performed on the test coupons made of aircraft grade aluminum plate. Commercial Mistras S9225 acoustic emission sensor and piezoelectric wafer active sensor were used to capture the acoustic emission waveforms from the fatigue crack. It has been shown that the piezoelectric wafer active sensor transducer successfully captured the fatigue crack–related acoustic emission waveforms in the thin plate. The piezoelectric wafer active sensor transducer seems to capture more frequency information of the acoustic emission waveform than the conventional acoustic emission sensor in this particular application. We have also shown the evolution of the acoustic emission waveforms as the fatigue crack grows. The signatures of the fatigue crack growth were captured by the evolution of the acoustic emission waveforms. This waveform evolution is highly related to the physical boundary conditions of the cracks as well as the fatigue crack growth mechanism. The fatigue loading and acoustic emission measurement were synchronized using the same acoustic emission instrumentation. This synchronization provided the exact load level when the acoustic emission signals had occurred during the fatigue crack growth.

The effect of radiation, temperature, and vacuum (RTV) on piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWASs) is discussed. This study is relevant for extending structural health monitoring (SHM) methods to space vehicle applications that are likely to be subjected to harsh environmental conditions such as extreme temperatures (hot and cold), cosmic radiation, and interplanetary vacuums. This study contains both theoretical and experimental investigations with the use of electromechanical impedance spectroscopy (EMIS). In the theoretical part, analytical models of circular PWAS resonators were used to derive analytical expressions for the temperature sensitivities of EMIS resonance and antiresonance behavior. Closed-form expressions for frequency and peak values at resonance and antiresonance were derived as functions of the coefficients of thermal expansion, aaa 123 ,,; the Poisson ratio, n and its sensitivity, ¶n ¶T; the relative compliance gradient ¶ ¶ s Ts ; E E 11 11 ( ) and the Bessel function root, z and its sensitivity, ¶z T¶ . In the experimental part, tests were conducted to subject the PWAS transducers to RTV conditions. In one set of experiments, several RTV exposure, cycles were applied with EMIS signatures recorded at the beginning and after each of the repeated cycles. In another set of experiments, PWAS transducers were subjected to various temperatures and the EMIS signatures were recorded at each temperature after stabilization. The processing of measured EMIS data from the first set of experiments revealed that the resonance and antiresonance frequencies changed by less than 1% due to RTV exposure, whereas the resonance and antiresonance amplitudes changed by around 15%. After processing an individual set of EMIS data from the second set of experiments, it was determined that the relative temperature sensitivity of the antiresonance frequency (f f AR AR) is approximately ´  - 63.1 10 C 6 and the relative temperature sensitivity of the antiresonance amplitude (ReZ) is approximately ´  - 3.31 10 C. 3 A tentative statistical analysis and comparative plots of the data from sets of PWAS transducers revealed that the trends observed on an individual PWAS are also observed on the entire set of PWAS transducers. The article concludes with a summary, conclusions, and suggestions for further work.

A resonant piezo-optical ring sensor with both piezoelectric and fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensing elements was assessed for ultrasonic wave detection. The ring sensor is an existing device that has been shown experimentally to exhibit a number of sensing features: omnidirectionality, mode selectivity, and frequency tunability. The present study uses finite element modeling to understand these features as a means to characterize and optimize the sensor. A combined vibration-wave propagation modeling approach was used, where the vibrational modeling provided a basis for understanding sensing features, and the wave propagation modeling provided predictive power for sensor performance. The sensor features corresponded to the fundamental vibrational mode of the sensor, particularly to the base motion of this mode. The vibrational modeling was also used to guide sensor optimization, with an emphasis on the FBG and piezoelectric sensing elements. It was found that sensor symmetry and nodes of extraneous resonance modes could be exploited to provide a single-resonance response. A series of pitch-catch guided wave experiments were performed on a thin aluminum plate to assess the optimized sensor configuration. Tuning curves showed a single-frequency response to a Lamb wave and mechanical filtering away from the dominant frequency; the sensor capability for mechanical amplification of a Lamb wave and mechanical amplification of a pencil-leadbreak acoustic emission event were also demonstrated.