An ultrasonic array is a single transducer that contains a number of individually connected elements. Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the use of ultrasonic arrays for non-destructive evaluation. Arrays offer great potential to increase inspection quality and reduce inspection time. Their main advantages are their increased flexibility over traditional single element transducer methods, meaning that one array can be used to perform a number of different inspections, and their ability to produce immediate images of the test structure. These advantages have led to the rapid uptake of arrays by the engineering industry. These industrial applications are underpinned by a wide range of published research which describes new piezoelectric materials, array geometries, modelling methods and inspection modalities. The aim of this paper is to bring together the most relevant published work on arrays for non-destructive evaluation applications, comment on the state-of the art and discuss future directions. There is also a significant body of published literature referring to use of arrays in the medical and sonar fields and the most relevant papers from these related areas are also reviewed. However, although there is much common ground, the use of arrays in non-destructive evaluation offers some distinctly different challenges to these other disciplines.

Ultrasonic arrays for non-destructive evaluation: A review

The paper provides a state of the art review of guided wave based structural health monitoring (SHM). First, the fundamental concepts of guided wave propagation and its implementation for SHM is explained. Following sections present the different modeling schemes adopted, developments in the area of transducers for generation, and sensing of wave, signal processing and imaging technique, statistical and machine learning schemes for feature extraction. Next, a section is presented on the recent advancements in nonlinear guided wave for SHM. This is followed by section on Rayleigh and SH waves. Next is a section on real-life implementation of guided wave for industrial problems. The paper, though briefly talks about the early development for completeness,. is primarily focussed on the recent progress made in the last decade. The paper ends by discussing and highlighting the future directions and open areas of research in guided wave based SHM.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0964-1726/25/5/053001/pdf

Guided wave based structural health monitoring: A review

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

A squash ball almost doesn't bounce; a Superball bounces first left then right, seeming to have a mind of its own. Remarkable and complex elastic behavior isn't confined to sports equipment and toys. Indeed, it can be found in some surprising places. When the elastic behavior of a rock is probed, for instance, it shows extreme nonlinearity hysteresis and discrete memory (the Flint‐stones could have had a computer that used a sandstone for random‐access memory). Rocks are an example of a class of unusual elastic materials that includes sand. soil, cement, concrete, ceramics and, it turns out, damaged materials, Many members of this class are the blue‐collar materials of daily life: They are in the bridges we cross on the way to work, the roofs over our heads and the ground beneath our cities—such as the Los Angeles basin (home to many earthquakes). The elastic behavior of these materials is of more than academic interest.

Nonlinear Mesoscopic Elasticity: Evidence for a New Class of Materials

The nondestructive assessment of the damage that occurs in components during service plays a key role for condition monitoring and residual life estimation of in-service components/structures. Ultrasound has been widely utilized for this; however most of these conventional methods using ultrasonic characteristics in the linear elastic region are only sensitive to gross defects but much less sensitive to micro-damage. Recently, the nonlinear ultrasonic technique, which uses nonlinear ultrasonic behavior such as higher-harmonic generation, subharmonic generation, nonlinear resonance, or mixed frequency response, has been studied as a positive method for overcoming this limitation. In this paper, overall progress in this technique is reviewed with the brief introduction of basic principle in the application of each nonlinear ultrasonic phenomenon.

Nonlinear ultrasonic techniques for nondestructive assessment of micro damage in material: A review

The level of nonlinearity in the elastic response of materials containing structural damage is far greater than in materials with no structural damage. This is the basis for nonlinear wave diagnostics of damage, methods which are remarkably sensitive to the detection and progression of damage in materials. Nonlinear wave modulation spectroscopy (NWMS) is one exemplary method in this class of dynamic nondestructive evaluation techniques. The method focuses on the application of harmonics and sum and difference frequency to discern damage in materials. It consists of exciting a sample with continuous waves of two separate frequencies simultaneously, and inspecting the harmonics of the two waves, and their sum and difference frequencies (sidebands). Undamaged materials are essentially linear in their response to the two waves, while the same material, when damaged, becomes highly nonlinear, manifested by harmonics and sideband generation. We illustrate the method by experiments on uncracked and crac...

Nonlinear Elastic Wave Spectroscopy (NEWS) Techniques to Discern Material Damage, Part I: Nonlinear Wave Modulation Spectroscopy (NWMS)

Recent theoretical and experimental studies demonstrated that a weakly or incompletely bonded interfaces exhibit highly nonlinear behavior. One of acoustic manifestations of such nonlinearity is the modulation of a probing high-frequency ultrasonic wave by low-frequency vibration. The vibration varies the contact area modulating the phase and amplitude of higher frequency probing wave passing through the interface. In the frequency domain, the result of this modulation manifests itself as side-band spectral components with respect to the frequency of the probing wave. This modulation effect has been observed experimentally for various materials (metals, composites, concrete, sandstone, glass) with various types of contact-type defects (interfaces): cracks, debondings, delaminations, and microstructural material damages. Study of this phenomenon revealed correlation between the developed modulation criterion and the quantitative characteristics of the interfaces, such as its size, loading condition, and bonding strength. These findings have been used for the development of an innovative nondestructive evaluation technique, namely Vibro-Acoustic Modulation Technique. Two modifications of this technique have been developed: Vibro-Modulation (VM) and Impact-Modulation (IM), employing CW and impact-induced vibrations, respectively. The examples of applications of these methods include crack detection in steel pipes, aircraft and auto parts, bonded composite plates etc. These methods also proved their effectiveness in the detection of cracks in concrete.

Nonlinear acoustic interaction on contact interfaces and its use for nondestructive testing

Nonlinear elastic wave spectroscopy (NEWS) represents a class of powerful tools which explore the dynamic nonlinear stress–strain features in the compliant bond system of a micro-inhomogeneous material and link them to micro-scale damage. Hysteresis and nonlinearity in the constitutive relation (at the micro-strain level) result in acoustic and ultrasonic wave distortion, which gives rise to changes in the resonance frequencies as a function of drive amplitude, generation of accompanying harmonics, nonlinear attenuation, and multiplication of waves of different frequencies. The sensitivity of nonlinear methods to the detection of damage features (cracks, flaws, etc.) is far greater than can be obtained with linear acoustical methods (measures of wavespeed and wave dissipation). We illustrate two recently developed NEWS methods, and compare the results for both techniques on roofing tiles used in building construction.

Micro-damage diagnostics using Nonlinear Elastic Wave Spectroscopy (NEWS)

Results are reported of the first systematic study of anomalous nonlinear fast dynamics and slow dynamics in a number of solids. Observations are presented from seven diverse materials showing that anomalous nonlinear fast dynamics (ANFD) and slow dynamics (SD) occur together, significantly expanding the nonlinear mesoscopic elasticity class. The materials include samples of gray iron, alumina ceramic, quartzite, cracked Pyrex, marble, sintered metal, and perovskite ceramic. In addition, it is shown that materials which exhibit ANFD have very similar ratios of amplitude-dependent internal-friction to the resonance-frequency shift with strain amplitude. The ratios range between 0.28 and 0.63, except for cracked Pyrex glass, which exhibits a ratio of 1.1, and the ratio appears to be a material characteristic. The ratio of internal friction to resonance frequency shift as a function of time during SD is time independent, ranging from 0.23 to 0.43 for the materials studied.

Slow dynamics and anomalous nonlinear fast dynamics in diverse solids.

Nonlinear acoustic technique has been recently introduced as a new tool for nondestructive inspection and evaluation of fatigued, defective, and fractured materials. Various defects such as cracks, debonding, fatigue, etc. lead to anomalous high levels of nonlinearity as compared with flawless structures. One of the acoustic manifestations of such nonlinearity is the modulation of ultrasound by low frequency vibration. Two methods employing the nonlinear interaction of ultrasound and vibration were developed, namely vibromodulation (VM) and impactmodulation (IM) methods. VM method employs forced harmonic vibration of a structure tested, while IM method uses impact excitation of structure natural modes of vibration. The feasibility tests were carried out for different objects and demonstrated high sensitivity of the methods for detection of cracks in steel pipes and pins, bonding quality in titanium and thermoplastic plates used for airspace applications, cracks in combustion engine, adhesion flaws in bond...

Alexander Sutin

Papers

Nonlinear Elastic Wave Spectroscopy (NEWS) Techniques to Discern Material Damage, Part I: Nonlinear Wave Modulation Spectroscopy (NWMS)

Nonlinear acoustic interaction on contact interfaces and its use for nondestructive testing

Micro-damage diagnostics using Nonlinear Elastic Wave Spectroscopy (NEWS)

Slow dynamics and anomalous nonlinear fast dynamics in diverse solids.

Vibro-Acoustic Modulation Nondestructive Evaluation Technique: