Development of an ultrasonic thickness measurement equipment prototype

Nava-Balanzar, Luciano; Soto-Cajiga, Jorge Alberto; Carlos, Pedraza-Ortega Jesus; Manuel, Ramos-Arreguín Juan

doi:10.1109/conielecomp.2010.5440783

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 2 publications

(1 reference statement)

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“…Time of flight (ToF) is an important technique for estimating the time delay between transmitted and received signals. It has been applied widely in measurement fields, such as blood velocity measurement [21], calculation of thickness in oil pipelines [22], non-contact thermometer [23], distance estimation and object detection in LiDAR [24][25][26], radar [27], and ultrasound systems [28,29]. ToF methods are classified into two approaches, directly ToF (DToF) and indirectly ToF (IToF).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Fast Cross-Correlation Combined with Interpolation Algorithms for the LiDAR Working in the High Background Noise

et al. 2022

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Processing speed and accuracy of measurements are important factors reflecting the performance quality of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems. This study proposed a fast cross-correlation (fCC) algorithm to improve the computation loading in the LiDAR system operating in high background noise environments. To reduce the calculation time, we accumulated cycles of the receiver waveform to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. In this way, the stop pulse can be easily distinguished from the background noise by applying the cross-correlation (CC) on the accumulated receiver waveform with the first start pulse. In addition, the proposed fCC combined with variant interpolation techniques: the parabolic (fCCP), gaussian (fCCG), cosine (fCCC), and cubic spline (fCCS) to increase the measurement accuracy were also investigated and compared. The experiments were performed on the real-time LiDAR system under high background light intensity. The tested results showed that the proposed method fCCP achieved 879 ns per measurement, 38 times faster than the original CC method combined with the same parabolic interpolation algorithm (CCP) 33.5 μs. Meanwhile, the fCCS method resulted in the highest accuracy/precision, reaching 5.193 cm/8.588 cm, respectively. These results demonstrated that our proposed method significantly improves the measurements speed in the LiDAR system operating under strong background light.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Fast Cross-Correlation Combined with Interpolation Algorithms for the LiDAR Working in the High Background Noise

et al. 2022

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“…However, these studies have not focused on deploying a complete device for nondestructive testing (NDT) and SAM systems. In this study, we will discuss the complete pulser/receiver (P/R) device used in the SAM system and the methods for increasing the scanning speed of the SAM system [12,[16][17][18][19][20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design of a Multichannel Pulser/Receiver and Optimized Damping Resistor for High-Frequency Transducer Applied to SAM System

et al. 2020

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Scanning acoustic microcopy (SAM) is widely used in biomedical and industrial applications in dermatology, ophthalmology, intravascular imaging, and small animal images, owing to SAM’s ability to photograph small structures with a good spatial resolution. One of the most important devices of this system is the pulser/receiver (P/R) (PRN-300, Ohlabs Corporation, Nam-gu Busan, Republic of Korea), which generates pulses to trigger a high-frequency transducer. This article presents the design of a pulse generator to excite high-frequency transducers with four channels. The characteristics of the pulses, such as time and frequency, can be reconfigured by using a high-speed field programmable gate array (FPGA). The configuration software was developed for communicating with the P/R device via a USB connector for easy, feasible pulse selection and real-time pulse management. Besides that, during the design and implementation of the hardware, we optimized the damping resistor value to reduce the overshoot and undershoot part of the signal, ensuring the best effect on the transducer signal. The test results show that unipolar pulses worked with transducers with frequencies over 100 MHz. The SAM systems can work simultaneously with multiple transducers, and the resulting images have different resolutions of regions.

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“…Our goal is to develop a useful ultrasound system for automatic pipeline inspection. The electronic system has already been validated to measure thicknesses [37]. We use a specialized technique for online signal reduction [38], where the signals are stored in an ad hoc data storage system [39].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Validation of an Articulated Sensor Carrier to Improve the Automatic Pipeline Inspection

MARTINEZ

Rodríguez-Olivares

Torres-Torres

et al. 2019

Sensors

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Pipeline inspection gauges (PIGs) carry out automatic pipeline inspection with nondestructive testing (NDT) technologies like ultrasound, magnetic flux leakage, and eddy current. The ultrasonic straight beam allows technicians to determine the wall thickness of the pipeline through the time of flight diffraction (TOFD), providing the pipeline reconstruction and allowing the detection of several defects like dents or corrosion. If the pipeline is of a long distance, then the inspection process is automatic, and the fluid pressure pushes the PIG through the pipeline system. In this case, the PIG velocity and its axial alignment with the pipeline cannot be controlled. The PIG geometry, the pipeline deformations, and the girth welds cause a continuous chattering when the PIG is running, removing the transducers perpendicularity with the inspection points, which means that some echoes cannot be received. To reduce this problem, we propose a novel method to design a sensor carrier that takes into account the angularity and distance effects to acquire the straight beam echoes. The main advantage of our sensor carrier is that it can be used in concave and convex pipeline sections through geometric adjustments, which ensure that it is in contact with the inner pipe wall. Our improvement of the method is the characterization of the misalignment between the internal wall of the pipeline and the transducer. Later, we analyzed the conditions of the automatic pipeline inspection, the existing recommendations in state-of-the-art technology, and the different mechanical scenarios that may occur. For the mechanical design, we developed all the equations and rules. At the signal processing level, we set a fixed gain in the filtering step to obtain the echoes in a defined distance range without saturating the acquisition channels. For the validation, we compared through the mean squared error (MSE) our sensor carrier in a straight pipe section and a pipe elbow of steel versus other sensor carrier configurations. Finally, we present the design parameters for the development of the sensor carrier for different pipeline diameters.

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Development of an ultrasonic thickness measurement equipment prototype

Cited by 11 publications

References 2 publications

A Fast Cross-Correlation Combined with Interpolation Algorithms for the LiDAR Working in the High Background Noise

A Fast Cross-Correlation Combined with Interpolation Algorithms for the LiDAR Working in the High Background Noise

Design of a Multichannel Pulser/Receiver and Optimized Damping Resistor for High-Frequency Transducer Applied to SAM System

Design and Validation of an Articulated Sensor Carrier to Improve the Automatic Pipeline Inspection

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