• Computers and Concrete
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.583-593
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• 2017

Applications of fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites for retrofitting, strengthening and repairing concrete structures have been expanded dramatically in the last decade. FRPs have high specific strength and stiffness compared to conventional construction materials, e.g., steel. Ease of preparation and installation, resistance to corrosion, versatile fabrication and adjustable mechanical properties are other advantages of the FRPs. However, there are major concerns about long-term performance, serviceability and durability of FRP applications in concrete structures. Therefore, structural health monitoring (SHM) and damage detection in FRP-retrofitted concrete structures need to be implemented. This paper presents a study on investigating the application of Rayleigh wave for detecting debonding defect in FRP-retrofitted concrete structures. A time-of-flight (ToF) method is proposed to determine the location of a debonding between the FRP and concrete using Rayleigh wave. A series of numerical case studies are carried out to demonstrate the capability of the proposed debonding detection method. In the numerical case studies, a three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) model is developed to simulate the Rayleigh wave propagation and scattering at the debonding in the FRP-retrofitted concrete structure. Absorbing layers are employed in the 3D FE model to reduce computational cost in simulating the practical size of the FRP-retrofitted structure. Different debonding sizes and locations are considered in the case studies. The results show that the proposed ToF method is able to accurately determine the location of the debonding in the FRP-retrofitted concrete structure.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.240-247
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• 2006

Piezoelectric sensor-based health monitoring technique using a two-step support vector machine (SYM) classifier is discussed for damage identification of a railroad track. An active sensing system composed of two PZT patches was investigated in conjunction with both impedance and guided wave propagation methods to detect two kinds of damage of the railroad track (one is a hole damage of 0.5cm in diameter at web section and the other is a transverse cut damage of 7.5cm in length and 0.5cm in depth at head section). Two damage-sensitive features were extracted one by one from each method; a) feature I: root mean square deviations (RMSD) of impedance signatures and b) feature II: wavelet coefficients for $A_0$ mode of guided waves. By defining damage indices from those damage-sensitive features, a two-dimensional damage feature (2-D DF) space was made. In order to minimize a false-positive indication of the current active sensing system, a two-step SYM classifier was applied to the 2-D DF space. As a result, optimal separable hyper-planes were successfully established by the two-step SYM classifier: Damage detection was accomplished by the first step-SYM, and damage classification was also carried out by the second step-SYM. Finally, the applicability of the proposed two-step SYM classifier has been verified by thirty test patterns.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.587-614
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• 2014

In recent years the interest in online monitoring of lightweight structures with ultrasonic guided waves is steadily growing. Especially the aircraft industry is a driving force in the development of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. In order to optimally design SHM systems powerful and efficient numerical simulation tools to predict the behaviour of ultrasonic elastic waves in thin-walled structures are required. It has been shown that in real industrial applications, such as airplane wings or fuselages, conventional linear and quadratic pure displacement finite elements commonly used to model ultrasonic elastic waves quickly reach their limits. The required mesh density, to obtain good quality solutions, results in enormous computational costs when solving the wave propagation problem in the time domain. To resolve this problem different possibilities are available. Analytical methods and higher order finite element method approaches (HO-FEM), like p-FEM, spectral elements, spectral analysis and isogeometric analysis, are among them. Although analytical approaches offer fast and accurate results, they are limited to rather simple geometries. On the other hand, the application of higher order finite element schemes is a computationally demanding task. The drawbacks of both methods can be circumvented if regions of complex geometry are modelled using a HO-FEM approach while the response of the remaining structure is computed utilizing an analytical approach. The objective of the paper is to present an efficient method to couple different HO-FEM schemes with an analytical description of an undisturbed region. Using this hybrid formulation the numerical effort can be drastically reduced. The functionality of the proposed scheme is demonstrated by studying the propagation of ultrasonic guided waves in plates, excited by a piezoelectric patch actuator. The actuator is modelled utilizing higher order coupled field finite elements, whereas the homogenous, isotropic plate is described analytically. The results of this "semi-analytical" approach highlight the opportunities to reduce the numerical effort if closed-form solutions are partially available.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.13-27
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• 2023

Fatigue crack is a fatal problem for steel structures. Early detection and maintenance can help extend the service life and prevent hazards. This paper presents the ultrasonic guided waves-based (UGWs-based) fatigue crack detection of a steel I-beam. The semi-analytical finite element model has been built to obtain the wave propagation characteristics. Damage indices in both time and frequency domains were analyzed by considering the characteristic variations of UGWs including the amplitude, phase angle, and wave packet energy. The pulse-echo and pitch-catch methods were combined in the detection scheme. Lab-scale experiments were conducted on welded steel I-beams to verify the proposed method. Results show that the damage indices based on the characteristic variations in the time domain can identify and localize the fatigue crack before it enters the rapid growth stage. The damage severity can be reasonably evaluated by analyzing the time-domain damage indices. Two nonlinear damage indices in the frequency domain give earlier warnings of the fatigue crack than the time-domain damage indices do. The identification results based on the above two nonlinear indices are found to be less consistent under various excitation frequencies. More robust nonlinear techniques needed to be searched and tested for early crack detection in steel I-beams in further study.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.209-214
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• 2017

A plane-wave incident upon asymmetric multi-layered dielectric grating as well as symmetric grating structure generates space harmonics. Selected space harmonics among those harmonics can undergo strong resonance scattering variations known as GMR(guided-mode resonance). In this paper, to clarify these effects, the field propagation and dispersion curve inside the grating region are analyzed by using a rigorous equivalent transmission-line theory(RETT) based on eigenvalue problem. The results show that, at the peak of a scattering resonance, the reflected mode is almost identical to a leaky wave that can be supported by the grating structure. Thus, it confirms to be occurred GMR effect associated with the free-resonant character of leaky waves at asymmetric multi-layered dielectric gratings. Quantitative simulation results illustrating the behavior of typical gratings are given, and the special case of normal incidence is discussed for TE and TM modes.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.61-68
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• 2003

The guided wave has been widely employed to characterize thin plates and layered media. The dispersion curves of phase and group velocities are essential for the quantitative application of guided waves. In the present work, a fully automated system for the measurement of backward radiation of LLW has been developed. The specimen moves in two dimensional plane as well as in angular rotation. The signals of backward radiation of LLW were measured from an elastic plate in which specific modes of Lamb wave were strongly generated. Phase velocity of the corresponding modes was determined from the incident angle. The generated Lamb waves propagated forward and backward with the leakage of energy into water. Backward radiated LLW was detected by the same transducer and its frequency components were analyzed to extract the related information to the dispersion curves. The dispersion curves of phase velocity were measured by varying the incident angle. Moving the specimen in the linear direction of LLW propagation, group velocity was determined by measuring the transit time shift in the ultrasonic waveform.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2019

$Si_3N_4$ rib-optical waveguides for evanescent-wave integrated-optical biosensors were analytically interpreted, to derive the single-mode propagation conditions. The integrated-optical biosensor structure based on two-mode interference was proposed, and the rib width and thickness and core thickness for a single-mode and two-mode waveguide (sensing region) were proposed to be $3{\mu}m$, 2 nm, and 150 nm and $3{\mu}m$, 20 nm, and 340 nm respectively. The optical characteristics of each guided-wave mode were investigated utilizing the film mode-matching (FMM) analysis.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.227-239
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• 2020

Despite proven effectiveness and accuracy in laboratories, the existing damage assessment based on guided ultrasonic waves (GUWs) or acoustic emission (AE) confronts challenges when extended to real-world structural health monitoring (SHM) for railway tracks. Central to the concerns are the extremely complex signal appearance due to highly dispersive and multimodal wave features, restriction on transducer installations, and severe contaminations of ambient noise. It remains a critical yet unsolved problem along with recent attempts to implement SHM in bourgeoning high-speed railway (HSR). By leveraging authors' continued endeavours, an SHM framework, based on actively generated diffuse ultrasonic waves (DUWs) and a benchmark-free condition contrast algorithm, has been developed and deployed via an all-in-one SHM system. Miniaturized lead zirconate titanate (PZT) wafers are utilized to generate and acquire DUWs in long-range railway tracks. Fatigue cracks in the tracks show unique contact behaviours under different conditions of external loads and further disturb DUW propagation. By contrast DUW propagation traits, fatigue cracks in railway tracks can be characterised quantitatively and the holistic health status of the tracks can be evaluated in a real-time manner. Compared with GUW- or AE-based methods, the DUW-driven inspection philosophy exhibits immunity to ambient noise and measurement uncertainty, less dependence on baseline signals, use of significantly reduced number of transducers, and high robustness in atrocious engineering conditions. Conformance tests are performed on HSR tracks, in which the evolution of fatigue damage is monitored continuously and quantitatively, demonstrating effectiveness, adaptability, reliability and robustness of DUW-driven SHM towards HSR applications.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.39-45
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• 2009

The attenuation of the fundamental non-torsional modes that propagate down buried steel water pipes has been studied. The mode shapes, mode attenuation due to leakage into the surrounding medium and the scattering of the modes as they interact with pipe joints and fittings have been investigated. In the low frequency region the mode predicted to dominate over significant propagation distances approximates a plane wave in the water within pipe. The established acoustic technique used to locate leaks in buried steel water pipes assumes that leak noise propagates as a single non-dispersive mode at a velocity related to the low frequency asymptote of this water borne mode.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.52-57
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• 1983

We report a theoretical study on wave propagation in magneto-optic thin-film waveguides. The field distribution and phase velocity of the guided hybrid modes are analyzed in terms of the phase difference of basic system modes and the Faraday rotation of the magneto-optic thin film. Splitting of the phase constant curves due to the F araday rotation is discussed. The present hybridmode analysis leads to a conversion matrix which shows that the distance dependence of the mode conversion in the guide is different from that in the bulk medium.