Traditional acoustic source location techniques are greatly affected by the threshold value of the acoustic signals. Based on the theory of modal acoustic emission, acoustic signals have characteristics indicative of multi-mode, broad band and dispersion. One-dimensional acoustic source location theory is developed to incorporate these characteristics. The arrival times and wave velocities needed for source location are influenced by mode and frequency. Based on the number of sensors used, two universal source location techniques have been investigated. To obtain the arrival time of one mode at certain frequency, the Gabor wavelet transform is applied to the analysis of acoustic signals. One-dimensional acoustic source location experiments in a thin plate have been performed using a lead break as acoustic source. The acoustic source location techniques have been greatly improved and the accuracy of these acoustic source location methods has been verified. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The non-collinear wave mixing technique was used for the quantitative evaluation of fatigue cracks. Two shear waves intersect and interact with fatigue cracks, which lead to the generation of a longitudinal wave. Non-collinear wave mixing experiments were conducted on different specimens, whereby the position at which the two incident waves intersected was scanned vertically below the notch and the measured signals were processed by filtering, time–frequency analysis and bispectral analysis. The presence of a wave packet in waveform, or wave-mixing component at the sum frequency in time–frequency domain, or bispectral peak at the sum frequency was used to characterize the fatigue cracks. The length of the fatigue cracks in two samples was estimated according to the spatial distribution of the ultrasonic nonlinear coefficient. The measured results corresponded closely with the actual lengths; therefore, the proposed method is effective for the quantitative evaluation of fatigue cracks.

The fundamental shear horizontal(SH0) wave has several unique features that are attractive for long-range nondestructive testing(NDT). By a careful design of the geometric configuration, electromagnetic acoustic transducers(EMATs) have the capability to generate a wide range of guided wave modes, such as Lamb waves and shear-horizontal(SH) waves in plates. However, the performance of EMATs is influenced by their parameters. To evaluate the performance of periodic permanent magnet(PPM) EMATs, a distributed-line-source model is developed to calculate the angular acoustic field cross-section in the far-field. Numerical analysis is conducted to investigate the performance of such EMATs with different geometric parameters, such as period and number of magnet arrays, and inner and outer coil widths. Such parameters have a great influence on the directivity of the generated SH0 waves that arises mainly in the amplitude and width of both main and side lobes. According to the numerical analysis, these parameters are optimized to obtain better directivity. Optimized PPM EMATs are designed and used for NDT of strip plates. Experimental results show that the lateral boundary of the strip plate has no perceivable influence on SH0-wave propagation, thus validating their used in NDT. The proposed model predicts the radiation pattern of PPM EMATs, and can be used for their parameter optimization.

In recent years, nonlinear ultrasonic techniques have been developed rapidly for defect detection and characterization at its early development stage. In this paper, non-collinear shear wave mixing is used for fatigue crack detection and characterization, exploring how orientation and size may be determined. This is achieved through measuring the amplitude of the generated longitudinal wave from a crack of interest. This amplitude is a function of the interaction angle and frequency ratio of two incident shear waves and the resulting amplitude parameter space is termed the nonlinear fingerprint of the crack. Numerical analysis of the nonlinear interaction between two incident shear waves and cracks was performed using two-dimensional finite element models to explore a broader parameter space than possible experimentally. It is shown that the interaction angle which leads to the maximum generated longitudinal wave amplitude is related to the orientation angle of the crack. To confirm these conclusions the model was validated using experimental measurements of vertical fatigue cracks grown using 3-point bending tests from initiation notches. The polarity flipping method was used to improve signal to noise ratio in such measurements. It is shown that there is a good agreement between the experimentally measured fingerprints and those simulated using finite element methods. Finally, an approximate method for sizing fatigue cracks was introduced that uses multiple non-collinear measurements along the crack length to determine its extent. As expected, the measured sizes from the proposed method indicate greater crack lengths than seen with linear ultrasonic phased array images due to the closed fatigue cracks being undetectable with linear arrays.

Harmonic nonlinear ultrasound can offer high sensitivity for residual stress measurements; however, it cannot be used for local stress measurements at a point in space and exhibits nonlinear distortions in the experimental system. This paper presents a feasibility study on the measurement of residual stress in a metal plate using a nonlinear Lamb wave-mixing technique. The resonant conditions for two Lamb waves to generate a mixing frequency wave are obtained via theoretical analysis. Finite element simulations are performed to investigate the nonlinear interactions between the two Lamb waves. Results show that two incident A0 waves interact in regions of material nonlinearity and generate a rightward S0 wave at the sum frequency. Residual stress measurement experiments are conducted on steel plate specimens using the collinear Lamb wave-mixing technique. By setting different delays for two transmitters, the generated sum-frequency component at different spatial locations is measured. Experimental results show that the spatial distribution of the amplitude of the sum-frequency component agrees well with the spatial distribution of the residual stress measured using X-rays. The proposed collinear Lamb wave-mixing method is effective for measuring the distribution of residual stress in metal plates.