In the last two decades, nonlinear ultrasonic testing is getting more attention due to their sensitivity to microcracks among a variety of NDT techniques used in infrastructure. Vibro-Acoustic Modulation (VAM) technique is one of the practical methods, that does not need the expensive hardware components required for the conventional nonlinear methods. This method is capable of identifying damage growth using the correlation of the level of nonlinearity to the severity or density of the damage. To be able to determine the sensitivity of VAM technique in comparison with other conventional nondestructive testing methods, Acoustic Emission (AE) technique as a global method and Ultrasonic Testing (UT) and Eddy current Testing (ET) techniques as local methods are investigated in an identical testing condition for similar specimens. The comparison has been conducted by testing a typical steel material used in the steel bridges under cyclic tension load. All these methods have some features in common and some differences. A comprehensive comparison study of these techniques sheds light on their practicality for various applications. Unlike the AE technique that listens to the structure for the received signal of the released elastic energy from the defects, VAM introduces the signals to the specimen and monitors the signal that was modulated by the vibration to get information about the crack. VAM and AE have some similarities such as no need for positioning sensors on the cracks and capability of detecting the crack in the early stages. On the other hand, local techniques such as UT and ET are more accurate than the VAM technique in terms of localization but less sensitive in terms of how soon they detect cracks.
Knowledge of the variability of the acoustic emission characteristics from SCUBA divers is critically important for
designing and operating a passive acoustic SCUBA characterization system. Using modeling and experimental
measurements in a controlled environment, we identified key source factors influencing the variability of the acoustic
emission parameters including Source Band Level (SBL), Spectral Power Density (SPD), and breathing periodicity or
emission modulation frequency. The key factors are: equipment, specifically, the design of the first stage (high pressure)
regulator and its service life; diver's experience and training; and, finally, operating conditions of the equipment and
diver, i.e. tank air pressure and the diver's motion activity. We found, for example, that the SBL could vary as much as
16 dB depending on the equipment used and up to 15 dB depending on the diver's intensity of motion.
Buried in soil, landmines exhibit distinguishable nonlinear dynamic characteristics. These characteristics have been successfully used for nonlinear acoustic/seismic detection of both antipersonnel and antitank landmines. Despite a high potential of the nonlinear acoustic landmine detection technique, its utility is currently limited by a relatively high noise level of the LDV at frequencies typically used for landmine detection. To mitigate this limitation, we propose a modulation approach that exploits a nonlinear interaction of the low frequency resonance vibrations and higher frequency sound waves. The result of the modulation is manifested in a high frequency range as additional spectral components at the combination frequencies. The nonlinear response of the soil-mine dynamic system measured at the combination frequencies is used for the detection of the buried landmine. Exploring the higher frequency range has another benefit of using a directional high frequency sound source.
Monitoring the incipient damage at the earliest possible stage is essential for predicting structural performance and remaining life of structural components. Existing prognostic methodologies incorporate conventional SHM and NDE techniques responsive to cracks and delaminations resulted from the irreversible material fracture and disintegration at the macro-scale. There is an increasing need for technologies that could allow for monitoring material degradation at the micro/meso scale before the onset of the macro-scale fracture. In this contribution, we report results of the real-time monitoring of the material micro/meso scale degradation using the nonlinear acoustic vibro-modulation technique. The technique explores nonlinear acoustic interaction of high frequency ultrasound and low frequency structural vibration at the site of the incipient damage. The indicator of the damage severity, nonlinear acoustic damage index (DI), was measured in real time during the strain-controlled three-point bending fatigue test of aluminum and steel specimens. Nondestructively, degradation of the specimen was revealed through the increase in the DI, which correlated well with the respective decrease in the specimen's stiffness. Destructive SEM examination confirmed sensitivity of the DI to the incipient micro/meso scale damage and advocated for utilizing the vibro-modulation approach for assessment of material degradation before fracture.
Resonance behavior of many types of landmines was first experimentally discovered in 2000 (Donskoy et al. in Proceedings of SPIE Vol. 4394, pp. 575-582, 2001). Laboratory studies and field tests have shown that mine’s resonance response is a complex phenomenon dependent upon interaction between soil and mines and their respective properties. Although the resonance effect was successfully used by various research teams for detection of landmines, there were no thorough studies on various factors influencing buried mine's resonance response. This paper presents results of theoretical and experimental investigation of this problem including multi-modal structure of mine's vibration response, effect of burial depth and soil condition. In the modeling efforts we considered multiple modes of vibration of mine casing and represented them as oscillators with effective parameters. This approach allowed for simplification of analysis and expanding existing lump-element model to account for multiple vibration modes. The experimental tests were focused on studying the effects of burial depth and soil moisture content on resonance behavior of soil-mine system. The tests have shown that a resonance frequency initially decreases with burial depth, as expected. However, an anomalous resonance frequency increase was observed at greater depths; soil moisture even further increases the resonance frequency.
In recent years, innovative vibro-modulation technique has been introduced for detection of contact-type interfaces such as cracks, debondings, and delaminations. The technique utilizes the effect of nonlinear interaction of ultrasound and vibrations at the interface of the defect. Vibration varies on the contact area of the interface modulating passing through ultrasonic wave. The modulation manifests itself as additional side-band spectral components with the combination frequencies in the spectrum of the received signal. The presence of these components allows for detection and differentiation of the contact-type defects from other structural and material inhomogeneities. Vibro-modulation technique has been implemented in N-SCAN damage detection system. The system consists of a digital synthesizer, high and low frequency amplifiers, a magnetostrictive shaker, ultrasonic transducers and a PC-based data acquisition/processing station with N-SCAN software. The ability of the system to detect contact-type defects was experimentally verified using specimens of simple and complex geometries made of steel, aluminum, composites and other structural materials. N-SCAN proved to be very effective for nondestructive testing of full-scale structures ranging from 24 foot-long gun barrels to stainless steel pipes used in nuclear power plants. Among advantages of the system are applicability for the wide range of structural materials and for structures with complex geometries, real time data processing, convenient interface for system operation, simplicity of interpretation of results, no need for sensor scanning along structure, onsite inspection of large structures at a fraction of time as compared with conventional techniques. This paper describes the basic principles of nonlinear vibro-modulation NDE technique, some theoretical background for nonlinear interaction and justification of signal processing algorithm. It is also presents examples of practical implementation and application of the technique.
The paper presents results of the field test of the nonlinear seismo-acoustic technique for detection and discrimination of land mines. The tests were conducted in summer 2001 at the U.S. Army's outdoor testing facilities. Plastic antitank mines (M19, VS1.6, VS2.2) and plastic antipersonnel mines (M14, VS50, TS50) were confidently detected at their maximum burial depths in both gravel and dirt lanes. Mine M14 is one of the smallest mines and is very difficult to detect by other techniques. The test proved that the nonlinear seismo-acoustic detection algorithm is very sensitive to AT and AP mines, while completely insensitive to false targets, such as rocks, chunks of metal or wood, thus promising to deliver high probability of detection with low false alarm rate. The results of the tests are in good agreement with the developed physical model of the seismo-acoustic detection.
Seismo-acoustic detection has demonstrated a high potential for the detection of land mines with a low probability of false alarms. A key element in the implementation and optimization of this new detection approach is the physical model of the mine-soil system. The validated model of the mine-soil system employs a mass-spring approach, which characterizes the dynamic response of the system using very few parameters derived from the dynamic mechanical impedances of the soil and the mines. This presentation describes the model and the results of the impedance measurements of live antitank and antipersonnel mines. The paper also deals with the optimization of the detection algorithm and its performance based on mine types, burial depth, and soil condition.
This paper is further development of the nonlinear vibro- acoustic technique, first presented at the previous SPIE conference on Detection and Remediation Technologies for Mines and Mineline Targets, Orlando '98. The present paper discusses the physical/mathematical model and experimental result of detection and discrimination of buried land mines. The mathematical model based on simplified 'mass-spring' approach. The effective spring has a nonlinear stiffness due to a nonlinear boundary condition at the soil-mine interface. Resulting nonlinear equation of motion and its solution in a good agreement with experimental observations. It has been demonstrated numerically and experimentally, that dynamically compliant mine cases exhibit strong nonlinear acoustic response, while less compliant false targets, such as rocks, solid pieces of wood and steel, and etc., behave as dynamically linear systems. The discovered nonlinear phenomenon has been used to develop the nonlinear vibro-acoustic method for land mine detection and discrimination. The experimental studies were performed with real inert plastic and wooden mines under laboratory and field conditions. First, the detection was performed with a contact sensor. Later, the method was tested using remote senors, such as a laser-doppler vibrometer and specially developed microwave vibrometers. These remote sensor demonstrated applicability for the developed nonlinear technique.
The innovative technique for detection of artificial objects, such as mines, pipes, containers, etc., buried in the ground, is developed and tested. The technique does not depend upon the material from which the object is fabricated whether it be metal, plastic, wood, or any other material. It depends upon the fact that a mine is a 'shell' whose purpose is to contain explosive materials and associated detonation apparatus. The mine shell is in contact with the soil in which it is buried. The shell is an acoustically compliant article, which compliance is notably different from the compliance of the surrounding soil. This difference is responsible for the mechanically nonlinear behavior of the soil/shell interface making it the detectable entity. Thus for this new technology, the fact that the mine is buried is turned to a detection advantage. Because the technique intrinsically detects buried 'shells,' it is insensitive to rocks, tree roots, chunks of metal, bricks, etc. which was confirmed experimentally. The paper discusses physical mechanisms of the nonlinear behavior of the soil-mine interface, the results of experimental investigation of the observed nonlinear interaction, and demonstration of landmine detection technique based on the discovered phenomenon.
Nonlinear acoustic technique has been recently introduced as a new tool for nondestructive inspection and evaluation of fatigued, defective, and fractured materials. Various defects such as cracks, debonding, fatigue, etc. lead to anomalous high level of nonlinearity as compared with flawless structures. One of the acoustic manifestations of such nonlinearity is the modulation of ultrasound by low frequency vibration. Two methods employing the nonlinear interaction of ultrasound and vibration were developed, namely vibro-modulation (VM) and impact-modulation (IM) methods. VM method employs forced harmonic vibration of a structure tested, while IM method uses impact excitation of structure natural modes of vibration. The feasibility tests were carried out for different objects and demonstrated high sensitivity of the methods for detection of cracks in steel pipes and pins, bonding quality in titanium and thermoplastic plates used for airspace applications, cracks in combustion engine, adhesion flaws in bonded composite structures, and cracks and corrosion in reinforced concrete. The model of the crack allowing to describe the modulation of sound by vibration is discussed. The developed nonlinear technique demonstrated certain advantages as compared with the conventional linear acoustic technique, specifically discrimination capabilities, sensitivity, and applicability to highly inhomogeneous structures.
The world's first high efficient quasi-CW polymer dye laser is described. An average output power of more than 6 W was achieved in a broad band operation mode, at 25 kHz pulse repetition frequency. A tunability over 555-660 nm wavelength range was demonstrated in a narrow band operation mode with minimum 0.5 W of average output power. A stable operation of the polymer laser for more than 2 hours was observed at output power level of 4 W. The integrated output energy of 30 kJ was obtained from one polymer element that corresponds o 220 million pulses.
The Q-switched Nd:YAG laser is the most recent in a series of pulsed laser systems for plastic surgery. The 532 nm wavelength has been shown to be absorbed by a variety of chromophores. These include tattoo pigments, oxygenated hemoglobin and melanin-containing epidermal cells. A simple multi-line solid state laser module pumped by double-frequency Q- switched YAG laser is presented. This solid state multi-line module enables tuning of the wavelength in the yellow spectral range to 560 nm or to 580 nm for dermatology applications. Conversion efficiency in excess of 70% was achieved at 10 Hz pulse repetition frequency and output energy per pulse of approximately 200 mJ.
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