Scattering of fundamental shear guided waves from a surface-breaking crack in plate-like structures
File(s)ChuaCawleyNagy2019_clean_file_for_Xplore.pdf (2.51 MB)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Chua, chien
Cawley, Peter
Nagy, Peter
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Cracks in critical sections of steel structures pose a major safety concern in many industries. Existing high frequency ultrasonic techniques offer high detection sensitivity to cracks but have poor inspection volume coverage, limiting their practical use for monitoring large areas of structures. Low frequency guided waves have relatively high inspection area coverage and are currently used in pipeline monitoring for corrosion defects, but face challenges in detecting critical cracks which often cause over an order of magnitude lower cross sectional area loss. A study of scattering from small cracks in a thin-walled (<12 mm) section with an incident plane SH0 guided wave at higher frequencies but remaining below the SH1 cut-off is presented here using quasistatic approximations, the aim being to explore the possibility of using this regime for crack growth monitoring applications. A 3D solution was developed using dimensional analysis, which showed that the SH0 reflection ratio is proportional to frequency to the power 1.5, to the effective crack size cubed, and is inversely proportional to the plate thickness and to the square root of the distance from the crack to the receiving sensor. Finite element analysis was used to validate these power coefficients and to calculate the proportionality constant. The results show that a higher inspection frequency offers improved sensitivity but the validity of the results here is limited to the SH1 cut-off frequency. The predicted 3D solution was validated by measurements on a pipe with a progressively grown notch.
Date Issued
2019-12
Date Acceptance
2019-07-26
Citation
IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, 2019, 66 (12), pp.1887-1897
ISSN
0885-3010
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Start Page
1887
End Page
1897
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control
Volume
66
Issue
12
Copyright Statement
© 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Sponsor
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC)
Identifier
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8782635
Grant Number
EP/L022125/1
Subjects
02 Physical Sciences
09 Engineering
Acoustics
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2019-07-31