• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.359-366
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• 1995

The parameter, B/A, quantifies nonlinearity of the pressure-density relationship of propagation medium. This study investigated quantitative evaluation technique for healing fractured bones using this ultrasonic nonlinear parameter, B/A, obtained by the second harmonic amplitude method. A series of fundamental experiments were performed on cylinder phantoms made of aluminium, which demonstrated potential capability of nonlinear parameter B/A in the diagnosis of healing fractured bones using ultrasound.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.504-511
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• 2008

This paper proposes an ultrasonic measurement method for measurement of linear interfacial stiffness of contacting surface between two steel plates subjected to nominal compression pressures. Interfacial stiffness was evaluated by using shear waves reflected at contact interface of two identical solid plates. Three consecutive reflection waves from solid-solid surface are captured by pulse-echo method to evaluate the state of contact interface. A non-dimensional parameter defined as the ratio of their peak-to-peak amplitudes are formulated and used to calculate the quantitative stiffness of interface. Mathematical model for 1-D wave propagation across interfaces is developed to formulate the reflection and transmission waves across the interface and to determine the interfacial stiffness. Two identical plates are fabricated and assembled to form contacting surface and to measure interfacial stiffness at different states of contact pressure by means of bolt fastening. It is found from experiment that the amplitude of interfacial stiffness is dependent on the pressure and successfully determined by employing pulse-echo ultrasonic method without measuring through-transmission waves.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.59-68
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• 2017

This study focused on modeling the behavior of the compressive stress using the average strain and ultrasonic test results in concrete. Feed-forward backpropagation artificial neural network (ANN) models were used to compare four types of concrete mixtures with varying water cement ratio (WC), ordinary concrete (ORC) and concrete with short steel fiber-reinforcement (FRC). Sixteen (16) $150mm{\times}150mm{\times}150mm$ concrete cubes were used; each contained eighteen (18) data sets. Ultrasonic test with pitch-catch configuration was conducted at each loading state to record linear and nonlinear test response with multiple step loads. Statistical Spearman's rank correlation was used to reduce the input parameters. Different types of concrete produced similar top five input parameters that had high correlation to compressive stress: average strain (${\varepsilon}$), fundamental harmonic amplitude (A1), $2^{nd}$ harmonic amplitude (A2), $3^{rd}$ harmonic amplitude (A3), and peak to peak amplitude (PPA). Twenty-eight ANN models were trained, validated and tested. A model was chosen for each WC with the highest Pearson correlation coefficient (R) in testing, and the soundness of the behavior for the input parameters in relation to the compressive stress. The ANN model showed increasing WC produced delayed response to stress at initial stages, abruptly responding after 40%. This was due to the presence of more voids for high water cement ratio that activated Contact Acoustic Nonlinearity (CAN) at the latter stage of the loading path. FRC showed slow response to stress than ORC, indicating the resistance of short steel fiber that delayed stress increase against the loading path.

• Journal of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.651-658
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• 2012

This paper concentrates on the evaluation of microcracks in thermal damaged concrete on the basis of the nonlinear ultrasonic modulation technique. Since concrete structure exposed to high temperature accompanies the development of microcracks due to the physical and chemical changes from temperature and exposed time, the adoption of nonlinear approach is required. Instead of using the conventional ultrasonic nondestructive methods which have the limitation in evaluating excessive microcracks, accordingly, a nonlinear ultrasonic modulation method which shows better sensitivity in quantifying microcracks is introduced. Upon the analysis for the modulation of ultrasonic wave and low frequency impact to measure the nonlinearity parameter, which can be used as an indicator of thermal damage, the verification processes for the introduced technique are followed: SEM investigation and permeable pore space test are performed to characterize thermally induced microcracks in concrete, and ultrasonic pulse velocity tests are performed to confirm the outstanding sensitivity of nonlinear ultrasonic modulation technique. In advance, compressive strength of thermal damaged concrete is measured to represent the effect of microcracks on performance degradation. Correlation studies between experimental data and measured data show that nonlinear ultrasonic modulation technique can effectively be used to quantify thermally induced microcracks, and to estimate the compressive strength of thermally damaged concrete.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.220-225
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• 2014

Generally, the nonlinearity of ultrasonic waves is measured using a nonlinear parameter ${\beta}$, which is defined as the ratio of the second harmonic's magnitude to the power of the fundamental frequency component after the ultrasonic wave propagates through a material. Nonlinear parameter ${\beta}$ is recognized as an effective parameter for evaluating material degradation. In this paper, we evaluated the nonlinear parameter of Al6061-T6 which had been subjected to an artificial aging heat treatment. The measurement was using the transmitted signal obtained from contact-type transducers. After the ultrasonic test, a micro Vickers hardness test was conducted. From the result of the ultrasonic nonlinear parameter, the microstructural changes resulting from the heat treatment were estimated and the hardness test proved that these estimates were reasonable. Experimental results showed a correlation between the ultrasonic nonlinear parameter and microstructural changes produced by precipitation behavior in the material. These results suggest that the evaluation of mechanical properties using ultrasonic nonlinear parameter ${\beta}$ can be used to monitor variations in the mechanical hardness of aluminum alloys in response to an artificial aging heat-treatment.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.458-463
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• 2010

Since the acoustic nonlinearity is sensitive to the minute variation of material properties, the nonlinear ultrasonic technique(NUT) has been considered as a promising method to evaluate the material degradation or fatigue. However, there are certain limitations to apply the conventional NUT using the bulk wave to thin plates. In case of plates, the use of Lamb wave can be considered, however, the propagation characteristics of Lamb wave are completely different with the bulk wave, and thus the separate study for the nonlinearity of Lamb wave is required. For this work, this paper analyzed first the conditions of mode pair suitable for the practical application as well as for the cumulative propagation of quadratic harmonic frequency and summarized the result in for conditions; (1) phase matching, (2) non-zero power flux, (3) group velocity matching, and (4) non-zero out-of-plane displacement. Experimental results in aluminum plates showed that the amplitude of the secondary Lamb wave and nonlinear parameter growed up with increasing propagation distance at the mode pair satisfying the above all conditions and that the ration of nonlinear parameters measured in Al6061-T6 and Al1100-H15 was closed to the ratio of the absolute nonlinear parameters.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1999.06a
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• pp.1133-1136
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• 1999

A magnetic levitation control system is inherently nonlinear and very unstable. Thus there should be a stabilizing compensator network and a negative feedback path using noncontact photoresistor or ultrasonic sensors for the levitation operation. Since the photo sensor plays a key role in the system, the steady-state error and transient performance of the overall system depend on the characteristics of the sensors. But the sensor itself also suffers from nonlinearity, and the magnitude of sensor input heavily depends on environmental conditions. To improve the output performance, we added a linearizing circuit for the sensor characteristics and a disturbance cancelation circuit to avoid sensitive output due to extraneous interfering light.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.193-197
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• 2013

In this study, ultrasonic nonlinear characteristics in the heat-treated aluminum alloy have been evaluated. The nonlinearity of ultrasonic wave has been measured as the acoustic nonlinear parameter ${\beta}$, depending upon the amplitude ratio of the second-order harmonic and the fundamental frequency component of ultrasonic wave propagating through the materials. The parameter ${\beta}$ measurement has been carried out with the reflected signals from the back-wall of specimens at the same plane using the contact-type transducers. The heat-treatment, aging, has been achieved at $300^{\circ}C$ for various durations in the range of 1 to 50 hours. The tensile strength and elongation are obtained by the tensile test and then compared with the parameter ${\beta}$. There is a peak of the acoustic nonlinear parameter ${\beta}$ on 5 hours aging and the ${\beta}$ decreases thereafter, exhibiting closed relations with tensile strength and elongation. Also, the heat-treatment time showing peak in the parameter ${\beta}$ was identical to that showing severe change in the ${\sigma}-{\varepsilon}$ curve. These results suggest that the acoustic nonlinear parameter ${\beta}$ can be used for monitoring the strength variations with aging of aluminum alloys.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.353-360
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• 2012

This paper describes a SLAM method which estimates landmark locations and robot pose simultaneously. The particle filter can deal with nonlinearity of robot motion as well as the non Gaussian property of robot motion uncertainty and sensor error. The state to be estimated includes the locations of landmarks in addition to the robot pose. In the experiment, four beacons which transmit ultrasonic signal are used as landmarks. The robot receives the ultrasonic signals from the beacons and detects the distance to them. The method uses rang scanning sensor to build geometric feature of the environment. Since robot location and heading are estimated by the particle filter, the scanned range data can be converted to the geometric map. The performance of the method is compared with that of the deadreckoning and trilateration.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.145-152
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• 2010

This study evaluated the fatigue degradation in a SUS316L specimen using the nonlinear ultrasonic method. The nonlinearity of the ultrasonic wave was estimated by a relative nonlinear parameter defined as the ratio of the amplitudes for the fundamental wave to the second harmonic wave. In the experiment, a measurement system with contact transducers was constructed; reliable measurements were assured by keeping measurement conditions consistent and reducing extra harmonics generated in the measurement system. Two types of SUS316L specimen were used in experiments; a rotating bar fatigue specimen and a tensile fatigue specimen. The fatigue condition used was high cycle fatigue. The former specimen had a cylindrical shape and was used to observe the change in the nonlinear parameter after fatigue accumulation in a specimen. The latter was a plate-shaped specimen and was used to confirm the change in the nonlinear parameter at the position where the fatigue stress was concentrated. The measured nonlinear parameter showed a strong correlation to the damage level in both fatigue tests.