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Journal articleMariani S, Heinlein S, Cawley P, 2020,
Compensation for temperature-dependent phase and velocity of guided wave signals in baseline subtraction for structural health monitoring
, Structural Health Monitoring: an international journal, Vol: 19, Pages: 26-47, ISSN: 1475-9217Baseline subtraction is commonly used in guided wave structural health monitoring to identify the signal changes produced by defects. However, before subtracting the current signal from the baseline, it is essential to compensate for changes in environmental conditions such as temperature between the two readings. This is often done via the baseline stretch method that seeks to compensate for wave velocity changes with temperature. However, the phase of the signal generated by the transduction system is also commonly temperature sensitive and this effect is neglected in the usual compensation procedure. This article presents a new compensation procedure that deals with both velocity and phase changes. The results with this new method have been compared with those obtained using the standard baseline stretch technique on both a set of experimental signals and a series of synthetic signals with different coherent noise levels, feature reflections, and defect sizes, the range of noise levels and phase changes being chosen based on initial experiments and prior field experience. It has been shown that the new method both reduces the residual signal from a set baseline and enables better defect detection performance than the conventional baseline signal stretch method under all conditions examined, the improvement increasing with the size of the temperature and phase differences encountered. For example, in the experimental data, the new method roughly halved the residual between baseline and current signals when the two signals were acquired at temperatures 15°C apart.
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Journal articleHerdovics B, Cegla F, 2020,
Long-term stability of guided wave electromagnetic acoustic transducer systems
, Structural Health Monitoring, Vol: 19, Pages: 3-11, ISSN: 1475-9217This article evaluates the long-term stability of a Lorentz force guided wave electromagnetic acoustic transducer. The specific application of the investigated electromagnetic acoustic transducer is pipeline health monitoring using low-frequency (27 kHz) long-range torsional guided waves. There is a concern that repeated swings in the temperature of the structure can cause irreversible changes in the transduction mechanism and therefore pose a risk to the long-term stability of transducers. In this article we report on guided wave signals acquired on a custom-built transducer while it was exposed to more than 90 heating cycles. The highest temperature that was reached during cycling was 80°C and the measurements were acquired over a 14-month period. At the end of the 1-year period, the transducer phase had changed by 23.32° and its amplitude by 3.7%. However, this change was not gradual and most of the change occurred early on, before the highest temperature was first reached in the temperature cycling process. The observed change after this was 6.08° phase shift and 0.9% amplitude change. The possible sources of output changes were investigated, and it was found that the mechanical properties of the contact layer between the electromagnetic acoustic transducer and the pipe surface was very important. A soft silicone interlayer performed best and was able to reduce temperature-induced phase changes in the monitored signals from a maximum of 80 degrees phase change to about 20 degrees phase change, a fourfold reduction.
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Journal articlePesaresi L, Fantetti A, Cegla F, et al., 2020,
On the use of ultrasound waves to monitor the local dynamics of friction joints
, Experimental Mechanics, Vol: 60, Pages: 129-141, ISSN: 0014-4851Friction joints are one of the fundamental means used for the assembly of structural components in engineering applications. The structural dynamics of these components becomes nonlinear, due to the nonlinear nature of the forces arising at the contact interface characterised by stick-slip phenomena and separation. Advanced numerical models have been proposed in the last decades which have shown some promising capabilities in capturing these local nonlinearities. However, despite the research efforts in producing more advanced models over the years, a lack of validation experiments made it difficult to have fully validated models. For this reason, experimental techniques which can provide insights into the local dynamics of joints can be of great interest for the refinement of such models and for the optimisation of the joint design and local wear predictions. In this paper, a preliminary study is presented where ultrasound waves are used to characterise the local dynamics of friction contacts by observing changes of the ultrasound reflection/transmission at the friction interface. The experimental technique is applied to a dynamic friction rig, where two steel specimens are rubbed against each other under a harmonic tangential excitation. Initial results show that, with a controlled experimental test procedure, this technique can identify microslip effects at the contact interface.
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Journal articleShi F, Huthwaite P, 2019,
Waveform-based geometrical inversion of obstacles
, Physical Review Applied, Vol: 12, Pages: 1-15, ISSN: 2331-7019Full-waveform inversion (FWI) can produce previously unobtainable levels of accuracy and is revolutionizing the field of wave imaging. The basic principle is that a numerically produced data set is matched to the measured waveforms, enabling a high-resolution image to be produced since the model being inverted fully captures the physical behavior without approximation. This is achieved by gradually updating the numerical model using optimization algorithms. Currently, most FWI methods aim to recover material properties of a medium containing penetrable scatterers; however, there are many applications that, instead, require the boundary shapes of impenetrable objects to be reconstructed. Conventional velocity-style FWI will be trapped in local minima, with such problems being due to the extremely sharp contrast at the boundary. We propose a FWI procedure to directly recover the geometrical parameters of impenetrable obstacles via shape optimizations. The geometry is reconstructed by iteratively deforming the boundary of the target, following the negative direction of the geometrical boundary gradient. The boundary gradient is calculated from the shape derivatives of mass and stiffness matrices of a finite-element (FE) representation, when distorting the elements attached at the boundary. In addition, multiple-scattering events, which are more likely to occur between impenetrable obstacles, can be utilized automatically to provide substantial information for the inversion. Numerical and experimental results are shown to demonstrate the accuracy of the procedure for an example taken from the field of nondestructive evaluation, giving sizing within fractions of a wavelength for the tested cases; this step change in accuracy could be critical in sizing defects, enabling significantly more reliable decisions to be made about whether it is safe to continue using a component. Mathematical derivations and physical reasons for the success of our approach are illustrated.
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Journal articleChua C, Cawley P, Nagy P, 2019,
Scattering of fundamental shear guided waves from a surface-breaking crack in plate-like structures
, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, Vol: 66, Pages: 1887-1897, ISSN: 0885-3010Cracks in critical sections of steel structures pose a major safety concern in many industries. Existing high frequency ultrasonic techniques offer high detection sensitivity to cracks but have poor inspection volume coverage, limiting their practical use for monitoring large areas of structures. Low frequency guided waves have relatively high inspection area coverage and are currently used in pipeline monitoring for corrosion defects, but face challenges in detecting critical cracks which often cause over an order of magnitude lower cross sectional area loss. A study of scattering from small cracks in a thin-walled (<12 mm) section with an incident plane SH0 guided wave at higher frequencies but remaining below the SH1 cut-off is presented here using quasistatic approximations, the aim being to explore the possibility of using this regime for crack growth monitoring applications. A 3D solution was developed using dimensional analysis, which showed that the SH0 reflection ratio is proportional to frequency to the power 1.5, to the effective crack size cubed, and is inversely proportional to the plate thickness and to the square root of the distance from the crack to the receiving sensor. Finite element analysis was used to validate these power coefficients and to calculate the proportionality constant. The results show that a higher inspection frequency offers improved sensitivity but the validity of the results here is limited to the SH1 cut-off frequency. The predicted 3D solution was validated by measurements on a pipe with a progressively grown notch.
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Journal articleEckel S, Huthwaite P, Zscherpel U, et al., 2019,
Realistic film noise generation based on experimental noise spectra
, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol: 29, Pages: 2987-2998, ISSN: 1057-7149Generating 2D noise with local, space-varying spectral characteristics is vital where random noise fields with spatially heterogeneous statistical proper-ties are observed and need to be simulated. A realistic, non-stationary noise generator relying on experimental data is presented. That generator is desired in areas such as photography and radiography. For example, before performing actual X-ray imaging in practice, output imag-es are simulated to assess and improve setups. For that purpose, realistic film noise modelling is crucial because noise downgrades the detectability of visual signals. The presented film noise synthesiser improves the realism and value of radiographic simulations significantly, allowing more realistic assessments of radiographic test setups. The method respects space-varying spectral characteristics and probability distributions, locally simulating noise with re-alistic granularity and contrast. The benefits of this ap-proach are to respect the correlation between noise and image as well as internal correlation, the fast generation of any number of unique noise samples, the exploitation of real experimental data, and its statistical non-stationarity. The combination of these benefits is not available in exist-ing work. Validation of the new technique was undertaken in the field of industrial radiography. While applied to that field here, the technique is general and can also be utilised in any other field where the generation of 2D noise with local, space-varying statistical properties is necessary.
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Journal articleHaslinger SG, Lowe MJS, Huthwaite P, et al., 2019,
Appraising Kirchhoff approximation theory for the scattering of elastic shear waves by randomly rough defects
, Journal of Sound and Vibration, Vol: 460, Pages: 1-16, ISSN: 0022-460XRapid and accurate methods, based on the Kirchhoff approximation (KA), are developed to evaluate the scattering of shear waves by rough defects and quantify the accuracy of this approximation. Defect roughness has a strong effect on the reflection of ultrasound, and every rough defect has a different surface, so standard methods of assessing the sensitivity of inspection based on smooth defects are necessarily limited. Accurately resolving rough cracks in non-destructive evaluation (NDE) inspections often requires shear waves since they have higher sensitivity to surface roughness than longitudinal waves. KA models are attractive, since they are rapid to deploy, however they are an approximation and it is important to determine the range of validity for the scattering of ultrasonic shear waves; this range is found here. Good agreement between KA and high fidelity finite element simulations is obtained for a range of incident/scattering angles, and the limits of validity for KA are found to be much stricter than for longitudinal wave incidence; as the correlation length of rough surfaces is reduced to the order of the incident shear wavelength, a combination of multiple scattering and surface wave mode conversion leads to KA predictions diverging from those of the true diffuse scattered fields.
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Journal articleCorcoran J, Nagy P, 2019,
Passive thermoelectric power monitoring for material characterisation
, Structural Health Monitoring, Vol: 18, Pages: 1915-1927, ISSN: 1475-9217Monitoring deterioration of material properties is important for assessing the structural integrity of engineering components, as it may indicate susceptibility to damage. This article focusses on the example of thermoelectric power measurements, which are known to be indicative of thermal and irradiation embrittlement and may therefore act as a proxy metric for material integrity. A passive thermoelectric power–monitoring technique is proposed which is suitable for permanent installation on engineering components. In passive measurements, the active perturbation (in this case, the heating required to create a temperature gradient) is replaced by incidental perturbation from the environment. The reduction in the ‘signal’ amplitude associated with relying on incidental perturbations may be compensated by increasing the number of individual measurements, facilitated by the greatly reduced power demand of the passive modality. Experimental studies using a stainless steel tube as a test component demonstrate thermoelectric power accuracy of <0.03 μV/°C is achievable with temperature gradients of the order of 2°C; in many cases of practical importance, this is sufficient to track the anticipated changes in thermoelectric power associated with thermal degradation.
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Journal articleHeinlein S, Cawley P, Vogt T, 2019,
Validation of a procedure for the evaluation of the performance of aninstalled structural health monitoring system
, Structural Health Monitoring, Vol: 18, Pages: 1557-1568, ISSN: 1475-9217Validation of the performance of guided wave structural health monitoring systems is vital if they are to be widely deployed; testing the damage detection ability of a system by introducing different types of damage at varying locations is very costly and cannot be performed on a system in operation. Estimating the damage detection ability of a system solely by numerical simulations is not possible as complex environmental effects cannot be accounted for. In this study, a methodology was tested and verified that uses finite element simulations to superimpose defect signals onto measurements collected from a defect-free structure. These signals are acquired from the structure of interest under varying environmental and operational conditions for an initial monitoring period. Measurements collected in a previous blind trial of an L-shaped pipe section, onto which a number of corrosion-like defects were introduced, were utilised during this investigation. The growth of three of these defects was replicated using finite element analysis and the simulated reflections were superimposed onto signals collected on the defect-free test pipe. The signal changes and limits of reliable detection predicted from the synthetic defect reflections superimposed on the measurements from the undamaged complex structure agreed well with the changes due to real damage measured on the same structure. This methodology is of great value for any structural health monitoring system as it allows for the minimum detectable defect size to be estimated for specific geometries and damage locations in a quick and efficient manner without the need for multiple test structures while accounting for environmental variations.
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Journal articleElliott JB, Lowe MJS, Huthwaite P, et al., 2019,
Sizing subwavelength defects with ultrasonic imagery: an assessment of super-resolution imaging on simulated rough defects
, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, Vol: 66, Pages: 1634-1648, ISSN: 0885-3010There is a constant drive within the nuclear power industry to improve upon the characterization capabilities of current ultrasonic inspection techniques in order to improve safety and reduce costs. Particular emphasis has been placed on the ability to characterize very small defects which could result in extended component lifespan and help reduce the frequency of in-service inspections. Super-resolution (SR) algorithms, also known as sampling methods, have been shown to demonstrate the capability to resolve scatterers separated by less than the diffraction limit when deployed in representative inspections and therefore could be used to tackle this issue. In this paper, the factorization method (FM) and the Time Reversal Multiple-Signal-Classification (TR-MUSIC) algorithms are applied to the simulated ultrasonic array inspection of small rough embedded planar defects to establish their characterization capabilities. Their performance was compared to the conventional total focusing method (TFM). A full 2-D finite-element (FE) Monte Carlo modeling study was conducted for defects with a range of sizes, orientations, and magnitude of surface roughness. The results presented show that for subwavelength defects, both the FM and TR-MUSIC algorithms were able to size and estimate defect orientation accurately for smooth cases and, for rough defects, up to a roughness of 100 μm. This level of roughness is representative of the thermal fatigue defects encountered in the nuclear power sector. This contrasted with the relatively poor performance of TFM in these cases which consistently oversized these defects and could not be used to estimate the defect orientation, making through-wall sizing with this method impossible.
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Journal articleEgerton JS, Lowe MJS, Huthwaite P, 2019,
Automated and antidispersive coherent and incoherent noise reduction of waveforms that contain a reference pulse
, NDT & E INTERNATIONAL, Vol: 105, Pages: 35-45, ISSN: 0963-8695 -
Journal articleShipway NJ, Huthwaite P, Lowe MJS, et al., 2019,
Performance based modifications of random forest to perform automated defect detection for fluorescent penetrant inspection
, Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation, Vol: 38, ISSN: 0195-9298The established Machine Learning algorithm Random Forest (RF) has previously been shown to be effective at performing automated defect detection for test pieces which have been processed using fluorescent penetrant inspection (FPI). The work presented here investigates three methods (two previously proposed in other fields, one novel method) of modifying the FPI RF based on the individual performance of decision trees within the RF. Evaluating based on the 2 Score, which is the harmonic mean of precision and recall which places a larger weighting on recall, it is possible to reduce the RF in size by up to 50%, improving speed and memory requirements, whilst still gain equivalent results to a full RF. Introducing a performance based weighting or retraining decision trees which fall below a certain performance level however, offers no improvement on results for the increased computation time required to implement.
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Journal articleIsla J, Cegla F, 2019,
Simultaneous transmission and reception on all elements of an array: binary code excitation
, Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol: 475, Pages: 1-23, ISSN: 1364-5021Pulse-echo arrays are used in radar, sonar, seismic, medical and non-destructive evaluation. There is a trend to produce arrays with an ever-increasing number of elements. This trend presents two major challenges: (i) often the size of the elements is reduced resulting in a lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and (ii) the time required to record all of the signals that correspond to every transmit–receive path increases. Coded sequences with good autocorrelation properties can increase the SNR while orthogonal sets can be used to simultaneously acquire all of the signals that correspond to every transmit–receive path. However, a central problem of conventional coded sequences is that they cannot achieve good autocorrelation and orthogonality properties simultaneously due to their length being limited by the location of the closest reflectors. In this paper, a solution to this problem is presented by using coded sequences that have receive intervals. The proposed approach can be more than one order of magnitude faster than conventional methods. In addition, binary excitation and quantization can be employed, which reduces the data throughput by roughly an order of magnitude and allows for higher sampling rates. While this concept is generally applicable to any field, a 16-element system was built to experimentally demonstrate this principle for the first time using a conventional medical ultrasound probe.
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Journal articleLiu Y, Van Pamel A, Nagy P, et al., 2019,
Investigation of ultrasonic backscatter using three-dimensional finite element simulations
, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol: 145, Pages: 1584-1595, ISSN: 0001-4966Theoretical models are commonly used to describe ultrasonic backscattering in polycrystalline materials. However, although a full multiple scattering formalism has been derived, due to the difficulty in evaluation, currently only the single and double scattering effects have been evaluated. Three-dimensional finite element (3D FE) models have recently been demonstrated to be capable of predicting ultrasonic attenuation in polycrystalline materials and thereby show great potential in overcoming this limitation. In this paper, the application of 3D FE models is extended to the backscatter problem. First, longitudinal-to-longitudinal backscattering amplitudes from single grains are predicted, where the setup and configuration of the finite element (FE) model are verified with an isotropic spherical inclusion for which an exact solution is available. Subsequently, backscatter in terms of the root-mean-square noise levels in two different pulse-echo scenarios is investigated; the first is an idealised configuration with plane wave transmission and point reception; the second represents a more realistic finite-size transducer acting with the same apodization in both transmission and reception. Comparisons of FE predictions and approximate theoretical solutions within a range of validity show good agreement; however, the results demonstrate that 3D FE is useful where the simple Independent Scatterer models break down. As computing power increases, 3D FE is an increasingly viable tool to further the understanding of wave propagation in polycrystalline materials.
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Journal articleLeung M, Corcoran J, Nagy PB, 2019,
The influence of the dynamic magnetoelastic effect on potential drop measurements
, NDT & E International, Vol: 102, Pages: 153-160, ISSN: 0963-8695Alternating Current Potential Drop (ACPD) measurements are routinely used for monitoring crack length in laboratory based fatigue tests, and so measurements will be taken on components which are exposed to cyclic dynamic stresses. It has been empirically observed that cyclic stresses cause a strong increase (above 10% is shown in this paper) in measured resistance that is both AC inspection frequency and loading frequency dependent. The excess resistance will result in erroneous measurements; this paper investigates the cause and provides recommendations to limit the influence. Applied stresses influence ACPD measurements through the magnetoelastic effect; elastic strain induces magnetization in ferromagnetic materials, which in turn influences the magnetic permeability and therefore skin depth. Further, it has recently been realised that cyclic magnetization results in a frequency dependent concentration of the magnetic flux at the surface of the component, and consequently a non-uniform spatial distribution of magnetic permeability. In this study it is found that the interaction between the non-uniform spatial distribution of both the current density and magnetic permeability results in significant non-linear modulation of the measurement signal. A combination of finite element simulations and experimental results are used to explore this phenomenon.
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Journal articleHerdovics B, Cegla F, 2019,
Compensation of phase response changes in ultrasonic transducers caused by temperature variations
, Structural Health Monitoring, Vol: 18, Pages: 508-523, ISSN: 1475-9217One of the biggest challenges in structural health monitoring is the compensation of monitored data for environmental and operational conditions. In order to reliably estimate the changes in the structure, it is essential that the effects of environmental and operational conditions on the ultrasonic signal are compensated for before the signals are further analysed. The temperature-induced propagation speed change has the biggest effect on the ultrasonic signal and has been thoroughly investigated. This article investigates the subtler, yet also very important, changes in transducer output resulting from changes in the operating temperature. A compensation method is proposed which compensates for both the transducer phase response change and the wave’s propagation speed change. A key practical feature of the presented compensation method is that it uses only the ultrasonic signal itself for compensation estimation and can be used for any type of ultrasonic wave regardless of the type of transducer. For demonstration purposes, in this article, the results are shown for zero-order torsional guided waves, acquired by a purpose-built electromagnetic acoustic transducer. For signals with a 41.5°C temperature difference, the proposed compensation method was able to reduce the effect of environmental and operational conditions by 20 dB further (7 dB at the tail of the echo) compared to standard methods. This results in a much higher sensitivity to defects in areas where strong reflections are received. Furthermore, for the presented measurement setup, the precision to which the temperature-dependent change in wave propagation speed could be estimated was improved by 15%.
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Journal articleLeung M, Corcoran J, Cawley P, et al., 2019,
Evaluating the use of Rate-based Monitoring for Improved Fatigue Remnant Life Predictions
, International Journal of Fatigue, Vol: 120, Pages: 162-174, ISSN: 0142-1123The ability to perform accurate remnant life predictions is crucial to ensure the integrity of engineering components that experience fatigue loading during operation. This is conventionally achieved with periodic inspections, where results from non-destructive evaluation and estimation of the operating conditions are obtained to perform remnant life predictions using empirical crack growth laws. However, remnant life predictions made with this approach are very sensitive to their input parameters; uncertainty in each parameter would aggregate and result in great uncertainty in the final prediction. With the increasing viability of permanently-installed systems, it is proposed that the rate of damage growth can be used to more accurately and confidently gauge the integrity of an engineering component and perform remnant life predictions using the Failure Forecast Method. A statistical analysis of an example fatigue crack growth test was performed to compare the uncertainties of the remnant life predictions made using the conventional inspection approach and the proposed rate-based monitoring approach. It is shown that the Failure Forecast Method produces significantly more accurate and confident predictions compared to the inspection approach. The use of the Failure Forecast Method under non-constant amplitude loading conditions was also investigated. An equivalent cycles method is introduced to accommodate step changes in operating conditions. The effect of load interactions was also studied through a fatigue test with isolated overloads and a random variable amplitude loading test. Overall, the study has shown that the frequent data obtained from permanently installed monitoring systems provides new opportunities in remnant life estimates and potentially opens the way to increasing the intervals between outages and safely reducing conservatism in life predictions.
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Journal articleGu X, Cegla F, 2019,
The effect of internal pipe wall roughness on the accuracy of clamp-on ultrasonic flow meters
, IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol: 68, Pages: 65-72, ISSN: 0018-9456Clamp-on transit-time ultrasonic flowmeters (UFMs) suffer from poor accuracy compared with spool-piece UFMs due to uncertainties that result from the in-field installation process. One of the important sources of uncertainties is internal pipe wall roughness which affects the flow profile and also causes significant scattering of ultrasound. This paper purely focuses on the parametric study to quantify the uncertainties (related to internal pipe wall roughness) induced by scattering of ultrasound and it shows that these effects are large even without taking into account the associated flow disturbances. The flowmeter signals for a reference clamp-on flowmeter setup were simulated using 2-D finite element analysis including simplifying assumptions (to simulate the effect of flow) that were deemed appropriate. The validity of the simulations was indirectly verified by carrying out experiments with different separation distances between ultrasonic probes. The error predicted by the simulations and the experimentally observed errors were in good agreement. Then, this simulation method was applied on pipe walls with rough internal surfaces. For ultrasonic waves at 1 MHz, it was found that compared with smooth pipes, pipes with only a moderately rough internal surface (with 0.2-mm rms and 5-mm correlation length) can exhibit systematic errors of 2 in the flow velocity measurement. This demonstrates that pipe internal surface roughness is a very important factor that limits the accuracy of clamp on UFMs.
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Conference paperMariani S, Cawley P, 2019,
Location specific temperature compensation of guided wave signals applied to pipe inspections
, Pages: 2427-2433The baseline subtraction method is widely used to detect defect signatures in guided wave structural health monitoring. In essence, an earlier measurement is subtracted from the 'current' signal, and high residuals might indicate damage occurrence. However, varying environmental and operational conditions, such as temperature, also produce signal changes and hence, potentially, high residuals. A number of temperature compensation methods have been developed, which typically targets the varying wave speed due to varying temperature. Nevertheless, other, subtler effects caused by temperature variations are often overlooked, such as changes in attenuation, in the transducer frequency response and in the relative amplitudes of different modes excited by the transducer. A novel temperature compensation method has been recently presented by the authors, which compensates for temperature induced changes of wave speed and signal phase. The compensated signals can then be fed to a second temperature compensation procedure that has been newly developed. This will correct any spatially dependent signal change that is a systematic function of temperature, hence producing residuals less affected by temperature variations. This new method was applied to a set of T(0,1) guided wave signals collected by a pipe monitoring system, yielding residuals reduced by at least 50% compared to those obtained using the standard approach at positions away from structural features, and by more than 90% at features such as the pipe end. The method therefore promises a substantial improvement in the detectability of small defects, particularly at existing pipe features.
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Journal articleShipway N, Barden T, Huthwaite P, et al., 2019,
Automated defect detection for Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection using Random Forest
, NDT and E International, Vol: 101, Pages: 113-123, ISSN: 0963-8695Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection (FPI) is the most widely used NDT method in the aerospace industry. Inspection of FPI is currently done visually and difficulties arise distinguishing between penetrant associated with defects and that due to insufficient wash-off or geometrical indications. This, in addition to the nature of the inspection process, means inspection is largely influenced by human factors. The ability to perform automated inspection would provide increased consistency, reliability and productivity.The Random Forest algorithm was used to detect defects in a number of flat titanium plates which had been processed with FPI and photographed to produce digital images. This method has demonstrated the ability to correctly distinguish between defects and other non-relevant indications with accuracy comparable to a human inspector with a very small number of training examples. These results show the potential for the Random Forest algorithm to be used to detect defects in aerospace components, allowing the entire FPI line to become autonomous.
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