Ultrasonic Guided Waves

Ultrasonic guided waves in solid media are important in nondestructive testing and structural health monitoring, as new faster, more sensitive, and economical ways of looking at materials and structures have become possible. This book can be read by managers from a "black box" point of view, or used as a professional reference or textbook.

The propagation of ultrasonic guided waves in solids is an important area of scientific inquiry, primarily due to their practical applications for nondestructive characterization of materials, such as nondestructive inspection, quality assurance testing, structural health monitoring, and providing a material state awareness. This Special Issue of Applied Sciences covers all aspects of ultrasonic guided waves (e.g., phased array transducers, meta-materials to control wave propagation characteristics, scattering, attenuation, and signal processing techniques) from the perspective of modeling, simulation, laboratory experiments, or field testing. In order to fully utilize ultrasonic guided waves for these applications, it is necessary to have a firm grasp of their requisite characteristics, which include that they are multimodal, dispersive, and are comprised of unique displacement profiles through the thickness of the waveguide.

This book introduces the fundamental theory of electromagnetic ultrasonic guided waves, together with its applications. It includes the dispersion characteristics and matching theory of guided waves; the mechanism of production and theoretical model of electromagnetic ultrasonic guided waves; the effect mechanism between guided waves and defects; the simulation method for the entire process of electromagnetic ultrasonic guided wave propagation; electromagnetic ultrasonic thickness measurement; pipeline axial guided wave defect detection; and electromagnetic ultrasonic guided wave detection of gas pipeline cracks. This theory and findings on applications draw on the author’s intensive research over the past eight years. The book can be used for nondestructive testing technology and as an engineering reference work. The specific implementation of the electromagnetic ultrasonic guided wave system presented here will also be of value for other nondestructive test developers.

Explains the physical principles of wave propagation and relates them to ultrasonic wave mechanics and the more recent guided wave techniques that are used to inspect and evaluate aircraft, power plants, and pipelines in chemical processing. An invaluable reference to this active field for graduate students, researchers, and practising engineers.

The propagation of ultrasonic guided waves in solids is an important area of scientific inquiry, primarily due to their practical applications for nondestructive characterization of materials, such as nondestructive inspection, quality assurance testing, structural health monitoring, and providing a material state awareness. This Special Issue of Applied Sciences covers all aspects of ultrasonic guided waves (e.g., phased array transducers, meta-materials to control wave propagation characteristics, scattering, attenuation, and signal processing techniques) from the perspective of modeling, simulation, laboratory experiments, or field testing. In order to fully utilize ultrasonic guided waves for these applications, it is necessary to have a firm grasp of their requisite characteristics, which include that they are multimodal, dispersive, and are comprised of unique displacement profiles through the thickness of the waveguide.

This book is organized around the various sensing techniques used to achieve structural health monitoring. Its main focus is on sensors, signal and data reduction methods and inverse techniques, which enable the identification of the physical parameters, affected by the presence of the damage, on which a diagnostic is established. Structural Health Monitoring is not oriented by the type of applications or linked to special classes of problems, but rather presents broader families of techniques: vibration and modal analysis; optical fibre sensing; acousto-ultrasonics, using piezoelectric transducers; and electric and electromagnetic techniques. Each chapter has been written by specialists in the subject area who possess a broad range of practical experience. The book will be accessible to students and those new to the field, but the exhaustive overview of present research and development, as well as the numerous references provided, also make it required reading for experienced researchers and engineers.

This book presents applications on the ultrasonic wave for material characterization and nondestructive evaluations. It could be of interest to the researchers and students who are studying on the fields of ultrasonic waves.