Submit to Sensors Review for Sensors Propose a Special Issue

Journal Browser

Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves

Print Special Issue Flyer
Special Issue Editors
Special Issue Information
Keywords
Published Papers

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Physical Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 October 2022) | Viewed by 26702
Please contact the Guest Editor or the Section Managing Editor at ([email protected]) for any queries.

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Clifford Lissenden

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
Interests: structural health monitoring; ultrasonic guided waves; nondestructive evaluation; mechanical behavior of materials; nonlinear guided waves
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Edition of Sensors will focus on original research involving the use of sensors for structural health monitoring and nondestructive evaluation with ultrasonic guided waves. Many types of waveguides exist including plates, pipes, laminates, surfaces, rail, and human bone. Structural health monitoring may employ on- or off-board modalities with stay-in-place sensory systems aimed at assessing structural integrity. Likewise, nondestructive evaluation may entail quality assurance testing of new parts or periodic inspection of parts already in service with the aim of identifying defects or damage. In both cases, the goals are to ensure safe operation, maximize utilization and readiness, minimize maintenance costs, and improve designs of future structural systems through better understanding of service conditions. While ultrasonic guided waves provide unique monitoring and inspection capabilities due to their long-range penetration and the sparse number of required actuation and reception points, their wave propagation characteristics must be well understood in order to interpret the received signals. Characteristics important to ultrasonic guided waves include their dispersion, multiple modes, 3D displacement profiles, modal excitability, attenuation, scattering, and nonlinear interactions. This Special Issue will encompass aspects of sensors on topics including, but not limited to, actuation and reception methods, signal processing, imaging, defect detection and classification, as well as the modeling and simulation of sensitivity to defects and material degradation.

Prof. Dr. Cliff Lissenden
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Keywords include but are not limited to:

Ultrasonic guided waves

Structural health monitoring
Nondestructive evaluation
Structural integrity
Harsh environments
Phased array transducers
Noncontact transducers
Signal processing
Machine learning
Corrosion
Fatigue cracks
Porosity
Delaminations

Published Papers (11 papers)

Download All Papers

Research

12 pages, 2612 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Mixing of Non-Collinear Lamb Wave Pulses in Plates with Material Nonlinearity

by Juan Carlos Pineda Allen and Ching Tai Ng

Sensors 2023, 23(2), 716; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s23020716 - 08 Jan 2023

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1291

Abstract

Guided waves have been extensively studied in the past few years, and more recently nonlinear guided waves have attracted significant research interest for their potential for early damage detection and material state characterization. Combined harmonic generation due to wave mixing can offer some advantages over second harmonic generation. However, studies focused on Lamb wave mixing are still very limited, and have mainly focused on collinear wave mixing and used plane wave assumption. In this paper, numerical simulations and experiments are conducted to understand the interaction of mixing non-collinear Lamb wave pulses with non-planar wavefronts. The results demonstrate that the generated secondary wave is cumulative under internal resonance conditions and the sum-frequency component of the combined harmonics is useful for characterizing material nonlinearities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 40761 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Ultrasonic Guided Waves for Liquid Water Localization in Fuel Cells: An Ex Situ Proof of Principle

by Jakob Sablowski, Ziwen Zhao and Christian Kupsch

Sensors 2022, 22(21), 8296; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22218296 - 29 Oct 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1637

Abstract

Water management is a key issue in the design and operation of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). For an efficient and stable operation, the accumulation of liquid water inside the flow channels has to be prevented. Existing measurement methods for localizing water are limited in terms of the integration and application of measurements in operating PEMFC stacks. In this study, we present a measurement method for the localization of liquid water based on ultrasonic guided waves. Using a sparse sensing array of four piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS), the measurement requires only minor changes in the PEMFC cell design. The measurement method is demonstrated with ex situ measurements for water drop localization on a single bipolar plate. The wave propagation of the guided waves and their interaction with water drops on different positions of the bipolar plate are investigated. The complex geometry of the bipolar plate leads to complex guided wave responses. Thus, physical modeling of the wave propagation and tomographic methods are not suitable for the localization of the water drops. Using machine learning methods, it is demonstrated that the position of a water drop can be obtained from the guided wave responses despite the complex geometry of the bipolar plate. Our results show standard deviations of 4.2 mm and 3.3 mm in the x and y coordinates, respectively. The measurement method shows high potential for in situ measurements in PEMFC stacks as well as for other applications that require deposit localization on geometrically complex waveguides. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

23 pages, 8268 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Short Range Pipe Guided Wave Testing Using SH0 Plane Wave Imaging for Improved Quantification Accuracy

by Filip Szlaszynski, Michael J. S. Lowe and Peter Huthwaite

Sensors 2022, 22(8), 2973; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s22082973 - 13 Apr 2022

Viewed by 1760

Abstract

Detection and criticality assessment of defects appearing in inaccessible locations in pipelines pose a great challenge for many industries. Inspection methods which allow for remote defect detection and accurate characterisation are needed. Guided wave testing (GWT) is capable of screening large lengths of pipes from a single device position, however it provides very limited individual feature characterisation. This paper adapts Plane Wave Imaging (PWI) to pipe GWT to improve defect characterization for inspection in nearby locations such as a few metres from the transducers. PWI performance is evaluated using finite element (FE) and experimental studies, and it is compared to other popular synthetic focusing imaging techniques. The study is concerned with part-circumferential part-depth planar cracks. It is shown that PWI achieves superior resolution compared to the common source method (CSM) and comparable resolution to the total focusing method (TFM). The techniques involving plane wave acquisition (PWI and CSM) are found to substantially outperform methods based on full matrix capture (FMC) in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Therefore, it is concluded that PWI which achieves good resolution and high SNR is a more attractive choice for pipe GWT, compared to other considered techniques. Subsequently, a novel PWI transduction setup is proposed, and it is shown to suppresses the transmission of unwanted S0 mode, which further improves SNR of PWI. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 6849 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Modeling Magnetostrictive Transducers for Structural Health Monitoring: Ultrasonic Guided Wave Generation and Reception

by Gaofeng Sha and Cliff J. Lissenden

Sensors 2021, 21(23), 7971; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21237971 - 29 Nov 2021

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2425

Abstract

Ultrasonic guided waves provide unique capabilities for the structural health monitoring of plate-like structures. They can detect and locate various types of material degradation through the interaction of shear-horizontal (SH) waves and Lamb waves with the material. Magnetostrictive transducers (MSTs) can be used to generate and receive both SH and Lamb waves and yet their characteristics have not been thoroughly studied, certainly not on par with piezoelectric transducers. A series of multiphysics simulations of the MST/plate system is conducted to investigate the characteristics of MSTs that affect guided wave generation and reception. The results are presented in the vein of showing the flexibility that MSTs provide for guided waves in a diverse range of applications. In addition to studying characteristics of the MST components (i.e., the magnetostrictive layer, meander electric coil, and biased magnetic field), single-sided and double-sided MSTs are compared for preferential wave mode generation. The wave mode control principle is based on the activation line for phase velocity dispersion curves, whose slope is the wavelength, which is dictated by the meander coil spacing. A double-sided MST with in-phase signals preferentially excites symmetric SH and Lamb modes, while a double-sided MST with out-of-phase signals preferentially excites antisymmetric SH and Lamb modes. All attempted single-mode actuations with double-sided MSTs were successful, with the SH3 mode actuated at 922 kHz in a 6-mm-thick plate being the highest frequency. Additionally, the results show that increasing the number of turns in the meander coil enhances the sensitivity of the MST as a receiver and substantially reduces the frequency bandwidth. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

17 pages, 4594 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Simultaneous Measurement of Thickness and Elastic Properties of Thin Plastic Films by Means of Ultrasonic Guided Waves

by Rymantas Jonas Kažys and Olgirdas Tumšys

Sensors 2021, 21(20), 6779; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21206779 - 13 Oct 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2048

Abstract

Ultrasonic guided waves are already used for material characterization. The advantage of these waves is that they propagate in the plane of a plate and their propagation characteristics are sensitive to properties of the material. The objective of this research was to develop an ultrasonic method that could be used to measure the properties of thin plastic polyvinylchloride films (PVC). The proposed method exploits two fundamental Lamb wave modes, A₀ and S₀, for measurement of a thin film thickness and Young’s modulus. The Young’s modulus is found from the measured phased velocity of the S₀ mode and the film thickness from the velocities of both A₀ and S₀ modes. By using the proposed semi-contactless measurement algorithm, the Young’s modulus and thickness of different thickness (150 µm and 200 µm) PVC films were measured. The uncertainty of thickness measurements of the thinner 150 µm PVC film is 2% and the thicker 200 µm PVC film is 3.9%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 11247 KiB

Open AccessArticle

High-Sensitivity Ultrasonic Guided Wave Monitoring of Pipe Defects Using Adaptive Principal Component Analysis

by Junwang Ma, Zhifeng Tang, Fuzai Lv, Changqun Yang, Weixu Liu, Yinfei Zheng and Yang Zheng

Sensors 2021, 21(19), 6640; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21196640 - 06 Oct 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1949

Abstract

Ultrasonic guided wave monitoring is regularly used for monitoring the structural health of industrial pipes, but small defects are difficult to identify owing to the influence of the environment and pipe structure on the guided wave signal. In this paper, a high-sensitivity monitoring algorithm based on adaptive principal component analysis (APCA) for defects of pipes is proposed, which calculates the sensitivity index of the signals and optimizes the process of selecting principal components in principal component analysis (PCA). Furthermore, we established a comprehensive damage index (K) by extracting the subspace features of signals to display the existence of defects intuitively. The damage monitoring algorithm was tested by the dataset collected from several pipe types, and the experimental results show that the APCA method can monitor the hole defect of 0.075% cross section loss ratio (SLR) on the straight pipe, 0.15% SLR on the spiral pipe, and 0.18% SLR on the bent pipe, which is superior to conventional methods such as optimal baseline subtraction (OBS) and average Euclidean distance (AED). The results of the damage index curve obtained by the algorithm clearly showed the change trend of defects; moreover, the contribution rate of the K index roughly showed the location of the defects. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 7020 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Nonlinear Guided Wave Tomography for Detection and Evaluation of Early-Life Material Degradation in Plates

by Chengwei Zhao, Sunia Tanweer, Jian Li, Min Lin, Xiang Zhang and Yang Liu

Sensors 2021, 21(16), 5498; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21165498 - 16 Aug 2021

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3366

Abstract

In this paper, the possibility of using nonlinear ultrasonic guided waves for early-life material degradation in metal plates is investigated through both computational modeling and study. The analysis of the second harmonics of Lamb waves in a free boundary aluminum plate, and the internal resonance conditions between the Lamb wave primary modes and the second harmonics are investigated. Subsequently, Murnaghan’s hyperelastic model is implemented in a finite element (FE) analysis to study the response of aluminum plates subjected to a 60 kHz Hanning-windowed tone burst. Different stages of material degradation are reflected as the changes in the third order elastic constants (TOECs) of the Murnaghan’s model. The reconstructed degradations match the actual ones well across various degrees of degradation. The effects of several relevant factors on the accuracy of reconstructions are also discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 11624 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Surface Roughness Effects on Self-Interacting and Mutually Interacting Rayleigh Waves

by Chaitanya Bakre and Cliff J. Lissenden

Sensors 2021, 21(16), 5495; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21165495 - 15 Aug 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1772

Abstract

Rayleigh waves are very useful for ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation of structural and mechanical components. Nonlinear Rayleigh waves have unique sensitivity to the early stages of material degradation because material nonlinearity causes distortion of the waveforms. The self-interaction of a sinusoidal waveform causes second harmonic generation, while the mutual interaction of waves creates disturbances at the sum and difference frequencies that can potentially be detected with minimal interaction with the nonlinearities in the sensing system. While the effect of surface roughness on attenuation and dispersion is well documented, its effects on the nonlinear aspects of Rayleigh wave propagation have not been investigated. Therefore, Rayleigh waves are sent along aluminum surfaces having small, but different, surface roughness values. The relative nonlinearity parameter increased significantly with surface roughness (average asperity heights 0.027–3.992 μm and Rayleigh wavelengths 0.29–1.9 mm). The relative nonlinearity parameter should be decreased by the presence of attenuation, but here it actually increased with roughness (which increases the attenuation). Thus, an attenuation-based correction was unsuccessful. Since the distortion from material nonlinearity and surface roughness occur over the same surface, it is necessary to make material nonlinearity measurements over surfaces having the same roughness or in the future develop a quantitative understanding of the roughness effect on wave distortion. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 4166 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Nonlinear Guided-Wave Mixing for Condition Monitoring of Bolted Joints

by Juan Carlos Pineda Allen and Ching Tai Ng

Sensors 2021, 21(15), 5093; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21155093 - 27 Jul 2021

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 2534

Abstract

Bolted joints are fundamental to numerous structural components in engineering practice. Nevertheless, their failure or even their loosening can lead to insufficient performance and reduced structural safety. This study presents a theoretical development and experimental investigation into nonlinear guided-wave mixing for integrity monitoring of bolted joints in plates. Combinational harmonics generated due to nonlinear Lamb wave mixing and contact acoustic nonlinearity at the bolted joints were used to evaluate the applied torque level in the joint. The area of the power spectral density in the region of the sum combinational harmonic bandwidth is found to be highly correlated to the applied torque level at the joint. Moreover, the effect of the number of cycles and thus the time duration of the excitation is investigated. The results show that the combinational harmonics remain robust for different numbers of cycles in detecting bolt loosening. The findings presented in this study also provide physical insight into the phenomena of nonlinear Lamb wave mixing for evaluating applied torque in bolted joints, and the results help further advance the use of nonlinear guided waves for damage detection. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 15245 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Defect Imaging Enhancement through Optimized Shape Factors of the RAPID Algorithm Based on Guided Wave Beam Pattern Analysis

by Yonghee Lee and Younho Cho

Sensors 2021, 21(12), 4029; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21124029 - 11 Jun 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2750

Abstract

In this study, a modified imaging algorithm was implemented to improve the imaging accuracy for defects located on a structure. Based on analysis of the Lamb wave mode, a guided ultrasonic wave inspection technique was applied, which was able to illustrate images of defects in a 6 mm steel plate simulating containment liner plate (CLP) in nuclear power plants. The dominant Lamb wave mode was determined through short-time Fourier transform waveform analysis and imaging verification. Following tomography verification, limitations of the antisymmetric mode in the thick steel plate were identified. In addition, a modified shape factor, based on the energy distribution factor according to the beam pattern and beam width, was suggested for field applications and improved imaging accuracy. Results of the analysis revealed a beam skewing phenomenon for the Lamb wave mode. In the case of S0 2.7 MHz·mm, skewing as well as distortion effects are not observed in the experiment, while the S0 modes at 2.64 and 2.74 MHz·mm show either of them. Considering skewing width, the size of the shape function was modified. Application of the modified shape function allows us to obtain more accurate image to actual defect shape. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

20 pages, 5403 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Non-Contact Inspection of Railhead via Laser-Generated Rayleigh Waves and an Enhanced Matching Pursuit to Assist Detection of Surface and Subsurface Defects

by Imran Ghafoor, Peter W. Tse, Javad Rostami and Kim-Ming Ng

Sensors 2021, 21(9), 2994; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s21092994 - 24 Apr 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2899

Abstract

Laser ultrasonic technology can provide a non-contact, reliable and efficient inspection of train rails. However, the laser-generated signals measured at the railhead are usually contaminated with a high level of noise and unwanted wave components that complicate the identification of defect echoes in the signal. This study explores the possibility of combining laser ultrasonic technology (LUT) and an enhanced matching pursuit (MP) to achieve a fully non-contact inspection of the rail track. A completely non-contact laser-based inspection system was used to generate and sense Rayleigh waves to detect artificial surface horizontal, surface edge, subsurface horizontal and subsurface vertical defects created at railheads of different dimensions. MP was enhanced by developing two novel dictionaries, which include a finite element method (FEM) simulation dictionary and an experimental dictionary. The enhanced MP was used to analyze the experimentally obtained laser-generated Rayleigh wave signals. The results show that the enhanced MP is highly effective in detecting defects by suppressing noise, and, further, it could also overcome the deficiency in the low repeatability of the laser-generated signals. The comparative analysis of MP with both the FEM simulation and experimental dictionaries shows that the enhanced MP with the FEM simulation dictionary is highly efficient in both noise removal and defect detection from the experimental signals captured by a laser-generated ultrasonic inspection system. The major novelty contributed by this research work is the enhanced MP method with the developments of, first, an FEM simulation dictionary and, second, an experimental dictionary that is especially suited for Rayleigh wave signals. Third, the enhanced MP dictionaries are created to process the Rayleigh wave signals generated by laser excitation and received using a 3D laser scanner. Fourth, we introduce a pioneer application of such laser-generated Rayleigh waves for inspecting surface and subsurface detects occurring in train rails. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves)

► Show Figures

Figure 1

Journal Menu

Journal Browser

Structural Health Monitoring and Nondestructive Evaluation with Ultrasonic Guided Waves

Share This Special Issue

Special Issue Editor

Special Issue Information

Keywords

Published Papers (11 papers)

Research

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI