Long Range Inspection of Rail Using Guided Waves

Wilcox, Paul D.; Pavlakovic, Brian; Evans, Mark; Vine, K.; Cawley, P.; Lowe, M. J. S.; Alleyne, David

doi:10.1063/1.1570142

Cited by 41 publications

(42 citation statements)

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“…Dry contact piezoelectric devices have been used to excite guided waves using in-plane surface tractions in a number of applications [6], [7], although existing devices are not omnidirectional. It is conceivable that a disk-or annular-shaped piezoelectric element could be poled in a such a way that its surface motion was axisymmetric.…”

Section: Selection Of Transducer Elementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In medium-and long-range applications, the reason for using guided waves is to increase the amount of a structure that can be inspected from one location, hence reducing inspection costs and sometimes enabling inaccessible regions in a structure to be tested. Long-range applications typically involve one-dimensional (1D) waveguide structures such as pipes [6] and rails [7] where the propagation distances are in the order of tens or even hundreds of meters. Conversely, plate-like structures such as storage tanks and pressure vessels behave as two-dimensional (2D) waveguides, and their inspection using guided waves falls into the medium-range category, with propagation distances of a few meters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Omnidirectional guided wave inspection of large metallic plate structures using an EMAT array

Wilcox

Lowe

Cawley

2005

IEEE Trans. Ultrason., Ferroelect., Freq. Contr.

132

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The design of an electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) array device for the inspection of large areas of metallic plate-like structures using the S0 guided wave mode is described. The reasons for using the S0 mode are discussed and it is shown how the choice of mode determines the nature of the EMAT array elements. A novel array construction technique is shown to be necessary whereby the EMAT coils for adjacent elements are overlapped in order to achieve the required element density. Results are presented that illustrate the operation of the device on steel and aluminum plate specimens in the thickness range from 5 to 10 mm. An area of at least 10 m 2 can be inspected from a single location. Spurious signals in the results are caused both by the unwanted A0 mode and by S0 sidelobes, the latter occurring at the same radial distance from the array as the genuine S0 signal from a reflector, but in the wrong direction. The signal-to-coherent noise performance of the complete system is determined by the amplitude ratio of the largest genuine S0 signal to the largest spurious signal. This is typically around 30 dB. The sensitivity of the device to artificial defects and genuine corrosion patches is demonstrated and the limitations of its operation are discussed. The feasibility of using the device with the S1 guided wave mode to inspect a 20 mm thick plate is also demonstrated.

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Section: Selection Of Transducer Elementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Omnidirectional guided wave inspection of large metallic plate structures using an EMAT array

Wilcox

Lowe

Cawley

2005

IEEE Trans. Ultrason., Ferroelect., Freq. Contr.

132

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“…Several successful applications have been made on one-dimensional structures such as pipelines (Alleyne et al 2001) and rails (Rose et al 2002;Wilcox et al 2003). Research work has also been carried out to study the possibility of applying the guided wave inspection to two-dimensional plate-like structures such as storage tanks, pressure vessels and airframes (Lowe & Diligent 2002;Lee & Staszewski 2003;Wilcox et al 2005), although this has resulted in little commercialization so far.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elastic waves guided by a welded joint in a plate

Fan

Lowe

2009

Proc. R. Soc. A.

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The inspection of large areas of complex structures is a growing interest for industry. An experimental observation on a large welded plate found that the weld can concentrate and guide the energy of a guided wave travelling along the direction of the weld. This is attractive for non-destructive evaluation (NDE) since it offers the potential to quickly inspect for defects such as cracking or corrosion along long lengths of welds. In this paper, a twodimensional semi-analytical finite-element (SAFE) method is applied to provide a modal study of the elastic waves that are guided by the welded joint in a plate. This brings understanding to the compression wave that was previously observed in the experiment. However, during the study, a shear weld-guided mode, which is non-leaky and almost non-dispersive, has also been discovered. Its characteristics are particularly attractive for NDE, so this is a significant new finding. The properties for both the compression and the shear mode are discussed and compared, and the physical reason for the energy trapping phenomena is then explained. Experiments have been undertaken to validate the existence of the shear weld-guided mode and the accuracy of the FE model, showing very good results.

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“…A transducer array operating in pulse -echo mode was used in [5] to selectively excite and sense various modes of propagation and to detect relatively small defects. This sophisticated inspection system used numerous transducers and was only intended for use over distances up to 50m when train operation is halted.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%