• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.18-26
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• 2000

Boiler high-temperature pipelines such as main steam pipe, header and steam drum in fossil power plants are degraded by creep damage due to severe operating conditions such as high temperature and high pressure for an extended period time. Conventional measurement techniques(replica method, electric resistance method, and hardness test method) for measuring creep damage have such disadvantages as complex preparation and measurement procedures, too many control parameters. And also these techniques have low practicality and applied only to component surfaces with good accessibility. In this paper, artificial creep degradation test and ultrasonic measurement for their creep degraded specimens(Cr-Mo alloy steels) were carried out for the purpose of evaluation for creep damage. Absolute measuring method of quantitative ultrasonic measurement for material degradation was established, and long term creep degradation tests using life prediction formula were carried out. As a result of ultrasonic tests for crept specimens. we conformed that both the sound velocity decreased and attenuation coefficient linearly increased in proportion to the Increase of creep life fraction($\Phi$c).

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.138-148
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• 2016

Measurement of elastic constants is crucial for engineering aspects of predicting the behavior of materials under load as well as structural health monitoring of material degradation. Ultrasonic velocity measurement for material properties has been broadly used as a nondestructive evaluation method for material characterization. In particular, pulse-echo method has been extensively utilized as it is not only simple but also effective when only one side of the inspected objects is accessible. However, the conventional technique in this approach measures longitudinal and shear waves individually to obtain their velocities. This produces a set of two data for each measurement. This paper proposes a simultaneous sensing system of longitudinal waves and shear waves for elastic constant measurement. The proposed system senses both these waves simultaneously as a single overlapped signal, which is then analyzed to calculate both the ultrasonic velocities for obtaining elastic constants. Therefore, this system requires just half the number of data to obtain elastic constants compared to the conventional individual measurement. The results of the proposed simultaneous measurement had smaller standard deviations than those in the individual measurement. These results validate that the proposed approach improves the efficiency and reliability of ultrasonic elastic constant measurement by reducing the complexity of the measurement system, its operating procedures, and the number of data.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.19 no.8
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• pp.122-130
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• 2005

For silent operation, Roll-Screen has been designed by using piezolelectric ultrasonic motor. To drive the ultrasonic motor, a digitally controlled drive system has been designed by using PLD. And to measure the position and velocity of Roll-Screen, encoder with 36 pulse/revolution is used. This paper proposed a new method for a precise velocity control of ultrasonic motor, in spite of using low-level encoder. The proposed method use a non-fixed sampling time and compensate the initial nonlinear characteristics of ultrasonic motors.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.204-207
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• 2000

An ultrasonic linear motor was composed of a slider and a stator vibrator including piezoelectric material and elastic material. The ultrasonic linear motors mainly consist of an ultrasonic vibrator which generates elliptical oscillations. L$_1$-B$_4$ ultrasonic linear motor use longitudinal and bending multi-vibration. In order to low driving voltage and improve the life time of the ultrasonic oscillator, we used stacked piezoceramics. Stacked piezoceramics are adhered to aluminum elastic material. The finite element method was used to optimize dimension of ultrasonic vibrator and direction of vibratory displacement. As a result of estimating the characteristics of the ultrasonic linear motor, no-load velocity was 2.04[m/s] when applied voltage was 70[V$\sub$rms/] in resonance frequency.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.225-234
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• 2009

Dredged silt from reservoirs in southern Taiwan was sintered to make lightweight aggregates (LWA), which were then used to produce lightweight aggregate concrete (LWAC).This study aimed to assess the compressive strength and homogeneity of LWAC using ultrasonic-echo sensing. Concrete specimens were prepared using aggregates of four different particle density, namely 800, 1100, 1300 and 2650 kg/$m^3$. The LWAC specimens were cylindrical and a square wall with core specimens drilled. Besides compressive strength test, ultrasonic-echo sensing was employed to examine the ultrasonic pulse velocity and homogeneity of the wall specimens and to explore the relationship between compressive strength and ultrasonic pulse velocity. Results show that LWA, due to its lower relative density, causes bloating, thus resulting in uneven distribution of aggregates and poor homogeneity. LWAC mixtures using LWA of particle density 1300 kg/$m^3$ show the most even distribution of aggregates and hence best homogeneity as well as highest compressive strength of 63.5 MPa. In addition, measurements obtained using ultrasonic-echo sensing and traditional ultrasonic method show little difference, supporting that ultrasonic-echo sensing can indeed perform non-destructive, fast and accurate assessment of LWAC homogeneity.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.48-55
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• 2014

Many techniques are available for destructive and nondestructive measurement of mechanical hardness. The ultrasonic method could be widely applicable as a nondestructive technique. Many studies have examined how changes in the mechanical hardness affect the longitudinal velocity of ultrasonic waves. This approach aims to estimate the overall velocity variations in specimens. However, proper nondestructive examination techniques are needed as effective tools for analyzing the effects of heat treatment on the surface of the specimens. Therefore, in this study, the effect on the hardness of piston rods was nondestructively measured using surface ultrasonic waves. The hardness after heat treatment was investigated at various depths in the specimens, and the velocity of the surface ultrasonic waves was measured with respect to the hardness of the piston rods. In addition, finite element method simulations were performed to confirm the behavior of the waves.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.126-138
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• 2012

Ultrasonic method is widely used for the evaluation of weathering index and of degree of deterioration because it is easily applicable $in$ $situ$. The basic idea of the method is that the ultrasonic velocity decreases as a rock is being weathered. Thus, the difference of ultrasonic velocities between fresh rock and weathered rock indicates the degree of weathering. In this method, the ultrasonic velocity of fresh rock is assumed to be 5,000 m/s. However, this assumption can cause significant errors in estimating weathering index, especially in case that those rocks of the same type have a wide range of ultrasonic velocities such as in Korea. Therefore, we obtained twenty rock specimens and sixty core samples commonly used for stone cultural heritages in Korea, and measured ultrasonic velocities. From the results, we found that the ultrasonic velocities of the same rock type, granite samples range from 3,118 to 5,380 m/s, and that the estimated weathering index can be highly biased if we use the fixed value of 5,000 m/s. We created a database (DB) by combining the measurement data and reported it. We also measured ultrasonic velocities by direct and indirect methods to quantify the calibration coefficient for each sampling site. We found that the calibration coefficients vary widely from site to site (1.31-1.76). Other factors, such as operator bias and temperature did not show any significant effect on errors in ultrasonic velocity measurements. Lastly, we applied our ultrasonic velocity DB and calibration coefficients to a stone cultural heritage, Bonghwang-ri Buddha statue. Our estimation of the weathering index was 0.3, 0.1 smaller than that by conventional method. The degree of deterioration was also different, "moderately weathered", while conventional method gave "highly weathered". Since other independent studies reported that the degree of deterioration of the Buddha statue was "moderately weathered", our estimation seems to be more accurate. Thus our method can help accurately evaluate the weathering index and the conservation planning for a stone cultural heritage.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.528-535
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• 2004

Ultrasonic Vibrator is designed to achieve the maximum vibration amplitude at 30 kHz by in-cluding a horn (diameter, 40 mm), mechanical vibration amplifier at the top of the ultrasonic vibrator in the system and making the complete system resonate. In addition, it is experimentally visualized by particle imaging velocimetry (PIV) that the acoustic streaming velocity in the gap is at maximum when the gap between the ultrasonic vibrator and stationary plate agrees with the multiples of half-wavelength of the ultrasonic wave. This fact results from the resonance of the sound wave and the theoretical analysis of that is also accomplished and verified by experiment. It is observed that the magnitude of the acoustic streaming dependent upon the gap between the ultrasonic vibrator and stationary plate possibly changes due to the measurement of the average velocity fields of the acoustic streaming induced by the ultrasonic vibration at resonance and non-resonance. There exists extremely small average velocity at non-resonant gaps while the relatively large average velocity exists at resonant gaps compared with non-resonant gaps. It also reveals that there should be larger axial turbulent intensity at the hub region of the vibrator and at the edge of it in the resonant gap where the air streaming velocity is maximized and the flow phenomena is conspicuous than that at the other region. Because the variation of the acoustic streaming velocity at resonant gap is more distinctive than that at non-resonant gap, shear stress increases more in the resonant gap and is also maximized at the center region of the vibrator except the local position of center (r〓0). At the non-resonant gap there should be low values of vorticity distribution, but in contrast to the non-resonant gap, high and negative values of it exist at the center region of the vibrator with respect to the radial direction and in the vicinity of the middle region with respect to the axial direction. Acoustic streaming is noise-free due to the ultrasonic vibration and maintenance-free because of the absence of moving parts. Moreover, the proposed method by acoustic streaming can be utilized to the nano and micro-electro mechanical systems as a driving mechanism in addition to the augmentation of the streaming velocity.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.334-341
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• 2003

When the pressure tubes(f are in contact with the calandria tube(CT) in the pressurized heavy water reactor(PHWR), the temperature difference between inner and outer wall of W results in a thermal diffusion of hydrogen (deuterium) and hydride blisters are formed on the outer surface of PT. Because the hydride blisters and zirconium matrix are acoustically continuous, it is not easy to distinguish the blisters from the matrix with conventional ultrasonic method. An ultrasonic velocity ratio method was developed to detect small hydride blisters on the zirconium pressure tube. Hydride blisters were grown in the PT specimen using a steady state thermal diffusion device. The flight times of longitudinal echo and reflected shear echo from the outer surface were measured accurately. The velocity ratio of the longitudinal wave to the shear wave was calculated and displayed using contour plot. Compared to the conventional flight time method of longitudinal wave, the velocity ratio method shows superior sensitivity to detect smaller blisters as well as better images for the blister shapes. Detectable limit of the outer shape of the hydride blisters was conservatively estimated as $500{\mu}m$, with the same specifications of ultrasonic transducer used in the actual PHWR pressure tube inspection.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.60-65
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• 1998

Recently, It is gradually raised necessity that thickness of thin film is measured accuracy and managed in industrial circles and medical world. Ultrasonic Signal processing method is likely to become a very powerful method for NDE method of detection of microdefects and thickness measurement of thin film below the limit of Ultrasonic distance resolution in the opaque materials, provides useful information that cannot be obtained by a conventional measuring system. In the present research, considering a thin film below the limit of Ultrasonic distance resolution sandwiched between three substances as acoustical analysis model, demonstrated the usefulness of ultrasonic Signal processing technique using information of ultrasonic frequency for NDE of measurements of thin film thickness, sound velocity, and step height, regardless of interference phenomenon