Pressure influence on elastic wave attenuation in polycrystalline materials

The effect of external load on ultrasonic wave attenuation in steel bars under bending stresses

The stress state in deformed solids has a significant impact on the attenuation of an ultrasonic wave propagating through the medium. Measuring a signal with certain attenuation characteristics can therefore provide useful diagnostic information about the stress state in the structure. In this work, basic principles behind a novel attenuation-based diagnostic framework are introduced. An experimental study on steel bars under three-point bending was carried out, and finite element analyses were used to numerically model the experiments. Obtained test results showed a strong correlation between the external load and the ultrasonic signal energy, which decreases with increasing load. A similar but positive correlation appeared between the level of attenuation of longitudinal ultrasonic wave signals and the external load, which allowed for efficient estimation of the mid-span bending moment. Upon proper calibration of testing equipment, the change in ultrasonic signal energy can therefore be used as an indicator of the external load level. As a result, this effect has potential applications in non-destructive structural health monitoring frameworks.

Correction of coupling error in contact-type ultrasonic evaluation of bolt axial stress

The stress monitoring of bolted connections is crucial in the evaluation of mechanical systems' structural health, and the ultrasonic method using TOF (Time of Flight) is considered promising in this application. However, the discrete nature of couplant layer characteristics can deteriorate the robustness of the ultrasonic method significantly. Here, for the purpose of deducting the coupling error, a compensating method of TOF is proposed. In this method, the components of the waves backscattering from bolt bearing surface within the temporal signal are filtered and utilized. The analytical coupling error correction model is established and the influences of the installation eccentricity upon the model are analyzed. Meanwhile, the proposed method is further verified by a finite element simulation and the results are consistent with the analytical derivations. Ultimately, the proposed method is experimentally validated and the scattering components are extracted from the pulse echo signal by using the synchrosqueezed wavelet transform. The results imply that, after being compensated by the proposed method, the stress measurement error decreased from 5% to 1%. This research provides a novel perspective in reducing the coupling error in a concise manner and is potential in improving the practicality of the ultrasonic bolt axial stress measurement methods.

A New Axial Stress Measurement Method for High-Strength Short Bolts Based on Stress-Dependent Scattering Effect and Energy Attenuation Coefficient

The accurate estimation of axial stresses is a major problem for high-strength bolted connections that needs to be overcome to improve the assembly quality and safety of aviation structures. However, the conventional acoustoelastic effect based on velocity-stress dependence is very weak for short bolts, which leads to large estimation errors. In this article, the effect of axial stress on ultrasonic scattering attenuation is investigated by calculating the change in the energy attenuation coefficient of ultrasonic echoes after applying axial preload. Based on this effect, a stress-dependent attenuation estimation model is developed to measure the bolt axial stress. In addition, the spectrum of the first and second round-trip echoes is divided into several frequency bands to calculate the energy attenuation coefficients, which are used to select the frequency band sensitive to the axial stress changes. Finally, the estimation model between axial stress and energy attenuation coefficients in the sensitive frequency band is established under 20 steps of axial preloads. The experimental results show that the energy attenuation coefficient in the sensitive band corresponds well with axial stress. The average relative error of the predicted axial stress is 6.28%, which is better than that of the conventional acoustoelastic effect method. Therefore, the proposed approach can be used as an effective method to measure the axial stress of short bolts in the assembly of high-strength connections.