Development of PZT-excited stroboscopic shearography for full-field nondestructive evaluation.

Nondestructive evaluation using shearography requires a way to stress the inspection target. This technique is able to directly measure the displacement gradient distribution on the object surface. Shearography visualizes the internal structural damages as the anomalous pattern in the shearograpic fringe pattern. A piezoelectric (PZT) excitation system is able to generate loadings in the vibrational, acoustic, and ultrasonic regimes. In this paper, we propose a PZT-excited stroboscopic shearography. The PZT excitation could generate vibrational loading, a stationary wavefield, and a nonstationary propagation wave to fulfill the external loading requirement of shearography. The sweeping of the PZT excitation frequency, the formation of a standing wave, and a small shearing to suppress the incident wave were powerful controllable tools to detect the defects. The sweeping of the PZT excitation frequency enabled us to determine one of the defect-sensitive frequencies almost in real time. In addition, because the defect sensitive frequencies always existed in wide and plural ranges, the risk of the defect being overlooked by the inspector could be alleviated. The results of evaluation using stroboscopic shearography showed that an artificial 20 mm-diameter defect could be visualized at the excitation frequencies of 5-8 kHz range and 12.5-15.5 kHz range. This technique provided full field reliable and repeatable inspection results. Additionally, the proposed method overcame the important drawback of the time-averaged shearography, being required to identify the resonance vibration frequency sensitive to the defect.

Development of an FPGA-based multipoint laser pyroshock measurement system for explosive bolts.

Pyroshock can cause failure to the objective of an aerospace structure by damaging its sensitive electronic equipment, which is responsible for performing decisive operations. A pyroshock is the high intensity shock wave that is generated when a pyrotechnic device is explosively triggered to separate, release, or activate structural subsystems of an aerospace architecture. Pyroshock measurement plays an important role in experimental simulations to understand the characteristics of pyroshock on the host structure. This paper presents a technology to measure a pyroshock wave at multiple points using laser Doppler vibrometers (LDVs). These LDVs detect the pyroshock wave generated due to an explosive-based pyrotechnical event. Field programmable gate array (FPGA) based data acquisition is used in the study to acquire pyroshock signals simultaneously from multiple channels. This paper describes the complete system design for multipoint pyroshock measurement. The firmware architecture for the implementation of multichannel data acquisition on an FPGA-based development board is also discussed. An experiment using explosive bolts was configured to test the reliability of the system. Pyroshock was generated using explosive excitation on a 22-mm-thick steel plate. Three LDVs were deployed to capture the pyroshock wave at different points. The pyroshocks captured were displayed as acceleration plots. The results showed that our system effectively captured the pyroshock wave with a peak-to-peak magnitude of 303 741 g. The contribution of this paper is a specialized architecture of firmware design programmed in FPGA for data acquisition of large amount of multichannel pyroshock data. The advantages of the developed system are the near-field, multipoint, non-contact, and remote measurement of a pyroshock wave, which is dangerous and expensive to produce in aerospace pyrotechnic tests.

Novel fiber optic sensor probe with a pair of highly reflected connectors and a vessel of water absorption material for water leak detection.

The use of a fiber optic quasi-distributed sensing technique for detecting the location and severity of water leakage is suggested. A novel fiber optic sensor probe is devised with a vessel of water absorption material called as water combination soil (WCS) located between two highly reflected connectors: one is a reference connector and the other is a sensing connector. In this study, the sensing output is calculated from the reflected light signals of the two connectors. The first reflected light signal is a reference and the second is a sensing signal which is attenuated by the optical fiber bending loss due to the WCS expansion absorbing water. Also, the bending loss of each sensor probe is determined by referring to the total number of sensor probes and the total power budget of an entire system. We have investigated several probe characteristics to show the design feasibility of the novel fiber sensor probe. The effects of vessel sizes of the probes on the water detection sensitivity are studied. The largest vessel probe provides the highest sensitivity of 0.267 dB/mL, while the smallest shows relatively low sensitivity of 0.067 dB/mL, and unstable response. The sensor probe with a high output value provides a high sensitivity with various detection levels while the number of total installable sensor probes decreases.

The Porcine Aortic Tissue Culture System in vitro for Stem Cell Research.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Due to the shortage of human donors for transplantation, the use of animal organs for xenotransplantation has come into great interest. Xeno-derived vessels and cardiac valves would be possible alternatives for the patient suffering from cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, we established in vitro culture system of a porcine vessel that could be helpful for the research of xenograft and stem cell research. METHODS AND RESULTS: We primarily isolated porcine thoracic aorta, cultured square-shaped pieces up to 17 days and analyzed its morphology and characters. The endothelial cells were primarily isolated from cultured porcine aortic pieces and their morphology, function and character were analyzed in order to confirm them as endothelial cells at day 3, 4, 8, 10 and 17. Even at day 17, the morphology exhibited the intact endothelial layer as well as specifically expressed CD31 and von Willebrand factor. The morphology of primarily isolated cells from cultured tissues was identical as an endothelial cell. By flow cytometry analysis, more than 80% of the isolated cells expressed CD31 and up to 80% took up acetyl low density lipoprotein (ac-LDL) until day 10 of tissue culture period even though it decreased to about 50% at day 17 that means they not only showed typical endothelial cell characters but also functioned properly. CONCLUSIONS: We successfully established and optimized a porcine vascular tissue in vitro culture system that could be a valuable model for in vitro study of xenotransplantation and stem cell research.

Fiber optic liquid leak detection technique with an ultrasonic actuator and a fiber Bragg grating.

We present a technique for liquid leak detection in which ultrasonic and optical waves are introduced into a fiber simultaneously. The system is based on an ultrasonic technique using an ultrasonic actuator and a fiber Bragg grating receiver. A fiber-guided ultrasonic wave is utilized to stress the fiber Bragg grating, which is remote from the ultrasonic transmitter. When the traveling ultrasonic wave encounters a liquid, part of the wave will leak out from the fiber, which results in an ultrasonic strain decrease in the fiber Bragg grating. The ultrasonic wave and its attenuation are detected by the light variation of a narrowband laser source reflected and transmitted from the fiber Bragg grating, and the amplitude variation of the ultrasound can eventually be correlated with the fiber area coupled with the liquid.