• 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 Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.1415-1423
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• 2013

The traveling wave ultra-sonic motor (TWUSM) is operated through the frictional force between the rotor and the stator. Hence, the contact mechanism should be analyzed to estimate the motor performance. However, the nonlinearity of the contact mechanism of the TWUSM makes it difficult to propose a proper contact model and a characteristic analysis method. To address these problems, a novel contact model is proposed and be termed the cylindrical dynamic contact model (CDCM) in this research. An estimation method of the motor performance is proposed using the CDCM, an analytical method, and a numerical method. The feasibility and usefulness of the proposed characteristic analysis are verified through experimental data.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.45-58
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• 2016

Freezing and thawing cycles induce deterioration and strength degradation of concrete structures. This study presumes that a large quantity of contact-type defects develop due to the freezing and thawing cycles of concrete and evaluates the degree of defects based on a nonlinearity parameter. The nonlinearity parameter was obtained by an impact-modulation technique, one of the nonlinear ultrasonic methods. It is then used as an indicator of the degree of contact-type defects. Five types of damaged samples were fabricated according to different freezing and thawing cycles, and the occurrence of opening or cracks on a micro-scale was visually verified via scanning electron microscopy. Dynamic modulus and wave velocity were also measured for a sensitivity comparison with the obtained nonlinearity parameter. The possibility of evaluating strength degradation was also investigated based on a simple correlation of the experimental results.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.215-222
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• 2017

In order to evaluate a stress state of concrete according to the change of tensile force of prestressed beam, improved nonlinear resonant ultrasonic spectroscopy(NRUS) method is proposed. This technique is advantageous to evaluate the stress state in initial state because the method shows much higher sensitivity than existing linear ultrasonic methods. The NRUS technique measure a nonlinearity parameter, which is calculated from the resonant frequency shift of ultrasonic wave related to the medium state, and the result is also closely related to the stress state of concrete. In this study, the nonlinearity parameter was measured with the change of tensile force to verify the close relationship between the two factors, and the effect of repetitive load cycle on the change of nonlinearity parameter was analyzed. In addition, sensitivity comparison with the linear ultrasonic pulse velocity method was performed. Through the experimental results, the possibility of NRUS technique for the evaluation of stress state in prestressed beam was confirmed.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.31-40
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• 1993

It is well known that nonlinear propagation characteristics of the wave in the tissue may give very useful information for the medical diagnoisis. In this paper, a new method to detect nonlinear propa gation characteristics of the internal vibration in the tissue for the low frequency mechanical vibra lion by using bispectral analysis is proposed. In the method, low frequency vibration of $f_0(=100Hz)$ is applied on the surface of the object, and the waveform of the internal vibration ${\times}{\;}(t)$ is measured from Doppler frequency modulation of silmultaneously transmitted probing ultrasonic waves. Then, the bispectra of the signal ${\times}{\;}(t.)$ at the frequencies ($f_0,{\;}f_0$) and ($f_0,{\;}2f_0$) are calculated to estimate the nonlinear propagation characteristics as their magnitude ratio, where since bispectrum is free from the gallssian additive noise we can get the value with high S/N. Basic experimental system is con structed by using 3.0 MHz probing ultrasonic waves and the several experiments are carried out for some phantoms. Results show the superiority of the proposed method to the conventional method using power spectrum and also its usefulness for the tissue characterization.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.7-12
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• 2017

A nonlinear ultrasonic parameter is defined by the ratio of displacement amplitude of the fundamental frequency component to that of the second-order harmonic frequency component. In this study, the ultrasonic displacement amplitude of an SUS316 specimen was measured via a piezo-electric-based method to identify the validity of piezo-electric detection method. For comparison, the ultrasonic displacement was also determined via a laser-based Fabry-Pérot interferometer. The experimental results for both measurements were in good agreement. Additionally, the stability of the repeated test results from the piezo-electric method exceeded that of the laser-interferometric method. This result indicated that the piezo-electric detection method can be utilized to measure a nonlinear ultrasonic parameter due to its excellent stability although it involves a complicated process.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.352-357
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• 2008

The detection of micro cracks in materials at the early stage of fracture is important in many structural safety assurance problems. The nonlinear ultrasonic technique (NUT) has been considered as a positive method for this, since it is more sensitive to micro crack than conventional linear ultrasonic methods. The basic principle is that the waveform is distorted by nonlinear stress-displacement relationship on the crack interface when the ultrasonic wave transmits through, and resultantly higher order harmonics are generated. This phenomenon is called the contact acoustic nonlinearity (CAN). The purpose of this paper is to prove the applicability of CAN experimentally by detection of micro fatigue crack artificailly initiated in Aluminum specimen. For this, we prepared fatigue specimens of Al6061 material with V-notch to initiate the crack, and the amplitude of second order harmonic was measured by scanning along the crack direction. From the results, we could see that the harmonic amplitude had good correlation with COD and it can be used to detect the crack depth in more accurately than the common 6 dB drop echo method.