Ultrasonic guided wave (UGW) is one of the most commonly used technologies for non-destructive evaluation (NDE) and structural health monitoring (SHM) of structural components. Because of its excellent long-range diagnostic capability, this method is effective in detecting cracks, material loss, and fatigue-based defects in isotropic and anisotropic structures. The shape and orientation of structural defects are critical parameters during the investigation of crack propagation, assessment of damage severity, and prediction of remaining useful life (RUL) of structures. These parameters become even more important in cases where the crack intensity is associated with the safety of men, environment, and material, such as ship’s hull, aero-structures, rail tracks and subsea pipelines. This paper reviews the research literature on UGWs and their application in defect diagnosis and health monitoring of metallic structures. It has been observed that no significant research work has been convened to identify the shape and orientation of defects in plate-like structures. We also propose an experimental research work assisted by numerical simulations to investigate the response of UGWs upon interaction with cracks in different shapes and orientations. A framework for an empirical model may be considered to determine these structural flaws.

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The generation and acquisition of the ultrasonic guided wave in metallic or composite structures to investigate the structural defects are quite straightforward; however, the interpretation and evaluation of the reflected/transmitted signal to extract the useful information is a challenging task. It is primarily due to the dispersion, and multi-modal behaviour of the Lamb waves which is dependent on the exciting wave frequency and thickness of the material under investigation. These multi-modes and dispersion behaviour lead to a complex waveform structure, and therefore, require an advanced signal processing technique to decipher the useful information in time and/or frequency domain. For this purpose, Wigner-Ville Distribution, due to its desirable mathematical properties, is considered as a powerful tool for generating time-frequency spectrum and estimating temporal and spectral features of this type of complex signals. However, because of its quadratic nature, the undesirable crossterms and spurious energies are also generated, which limit the readability and the interpretation of the spectrum. To suppress this effect, the autoregressive model based upon Burg's Maximum Entropy method was employed in the paper to modify the kernels of the discrete Wigner-Ville Distribution. This technique was applied to ultrasonic Lamb wave signals obtained numerically and experimentally under the different configuration to extract useful discriminating spectral and temporal information that was required for mode identification, structural damage localization, and its quantification. For damage localization, based upon excellent time-frequency energy distribution, the proposed method precisely estimated the distance between two closely spaced notches in a metallic plate from different simulated noisy signals with a maximum uncertainty of 5%. Moreover, the energy concentration of the time-frequency energy distribution in a combination with variation of its instantaneous frequency curve was also effective in identifying the overlapping modes of the Lamb wave signal. Lastly, for damage quantification, three time-frequency based damage indices namely, energy concentration, time-frequency flux, and instantaneous frequency were extracted from the five sets of specimens using the proposed time-frequency scheme and trained them for the regression model. The model testing proved that the damage indices have the potential to predict the crack sizes precisely and reliably.

Corrosion-induced degradation in marine steel structures is highly dependent on the surrounding environmental conditions and sea water compositions that varies significantly around global sea water bodies. This research investigates the corrosion behaviour of ship-grade steels exposed under different sea water compositions and environmental conditions typical of the Arabian Sea. More, environmental conditions spanning those anticipated for the shipping structures operating in the highly saline and warmest regions in the Arabian Sea have been simulated in laboratorybased experiments by using heated and aerated artificial sea water. Following their exposures, the corrosion performance of coupons has been investigated using the standard weight loss and a new dimensional metrology-based approach. Besides, the corrosion products formed on the steel surfaces have been characterised using various analytical techniques. Considerably higher corrosion losses and maximum corrosion depths were observed in the nutrient-rich polluted sea waters than those recorded in the natural sea waters, as well as in the simulated artificial sea water conditions.

The composition of seawater plays a very significant role in determining the severity of corrosion process in marine assets. The influential contributors to the general and pitting corrosions in marine structures include temperature, dissolved oxygen (DO), salinity, PH, chlorides, pollutants, nutrients, and microbiological activities in seawater. The Cu-Ni (90/10) alloy is increasingly used in marine applications such as heat exchangers and marine pipelines because of its excellent corrosion resistant properties. Despite the significant advancements in corrosion shielding procedures, complete stoppage of corrosion induced metal loss, especially under rugged marine environments, is practically impossible. The selection of appropriate metal thickness is merely a multifaceted decision because of the high variability in operating conditions and associated corrosion rate in various seawater bodies across the globe. The present research study aims to analyze the early phase of corrosion behavior of Cu-Ni (90/10) alloy in open-sea conditions as well as in pollutant-rich coastal waters of the Arabian Sea. Test samples were placed under natural climatic conditions of selected sites, followed by the mass loss and corrosion rate evaluation. The corrosion rate in the pollutant-rich coastal waters was around five times higher than in the natural seawater. A case study on marine condenser (fitted with of Cu-Ni 90/10 alloy tubes) is presented, and a risk-based inspection (RBI) plan is developed to facilitate equipment designers, operators, and maintainers to consider the implications of warm and polluted seawater on equipment reliability, service life, and subsequent health inspection/ maintenance.