ABSTRACT
Ultrasonic nondestructive testing inspections using phased arrays are performed on a wide range of components and materials. All real inspections suffer, to varying extents, from coherent noise, including image artifacts and speckle caused by complex geometries and grain scatter, respectively. By its nature, this noise is not reduced by averaging; however, it degrades the signal-to-noise ratio of defects and ultimately limits their detectability. When evaluating the effectiveness of an inspection, a large pool of data from samples containing a range of different defects are important to estimate the probability of detection of defects and to help characterize them. For a given inspection, coherent noise is easy to measure experimentally but hard to model realistically. Conversely, the ultrasonic response of defects can be simulated relatively easily. This paper proposes a novel method of simulating realistic array data by combining noise-free simulations of defect responses with coherent noise taken from experimental data. This removes the need for costly physical samples with known defects to be made and allows for large data sets to be created easily.
ABSTRACT
A sparse-array structural health monitoring (SHM) system based on guided waves was applied to the door of a commercial shipping container. The door comprised a corrugated steel panel approximately 2.4 m by 2.4 m surrounded by a box beam frame and testing was performed in a nonlaboratory environment. A 3-D finite element (FE) model of the corrugations was used to predict transmission coefficients for the A0 and S0 modes across the corrugations as a function of incidence angle. The S0 mode transmission across the corrugations was substantially stronger, and this mode was used in the main test series. A sparse array with 9 transducers was attached to the structure, and signals from the undamaged structure were recorded at periodic intervals over a 3-week period, and the resulting signal database was used for temperature compensation of subsequent signals. Defects in the form of holes whose diameter was increased incrementally from 1 to 10 mm were introduced at 2 different points of the structure, and signals were taken for each condition. Direct analysis of subtracted signals allowed understanding of the defect detection capability of the system. Comparison of signals transmitted between different transducer pairs before and after damage was used to give an initial indication of defect detectability. Signals from all combinations of transducers were then used in imaging algorithms, and good localization of holes with a 5-mm diameter or above was possible within the sparse array, which covered half of the area of the structure.
