Monitoring corrosion-induced thickness loss of stainless steel plates using the electromechanical impedance technique

Abstract

Stainless steel plates are widely used in steel structures. Corrosion damage of a stainless steel plate can induce the thickness and mass loss of the stainless steel plate. The corrosion-induced thickness loss (CITL) is one of the main reasons for the degradation of the stiffness and bearing capacity of the stainless steel plate, which endangers the safety of the structure and causes economic losses. Therefore, effective monitoring of the CITL of the stainless steel plate can help to ensure the safety of steel structures. In this study, a novel monitoring method for the CITL of the stainless steel plate based on the electromechanical impedance (EMI) technique is presented. The effective mechanical admittance (EMA) of a simply supported thin stainless steel plate under the excitation of a single surface-bonded piezoelectric transducer is derived theoretically; the resonance frequency shift ( Δ f ) of the bending vibration mode in the admittance signature is extracted as the CITL-sensitive feature to identify the CITL of the stainless steel plate. The quantitative relationship between Δ f and CITL, based on the EMA, is established theoretically for monitoring the CITL of the stainless steel plate. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experiments. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can sensitively identify, accurately quantify and predict the CITL of the stainless steel plate, and has excellent stability and reliability. This method can not only overcome the limitation of the existing statistics-based EMI methods that cannot quantify the CITL, but also compensate for the weakness of commonly-used non-destructive testing methods that cannot quantitatively predict CITL in an on-line monitoring manner. The proposed method provides an effective monitoring and tracking tool for the CITL of the stainless steel plate.

Monitoring of crack repair in concrete using spherical smart aggregates based on electromechanical impedance (EMI) technique

“…Due to the plate-like geometry of the inner piezoelectric transducers, SAs have a relatively short sensing range and the SW is unidimensional [32], which lead to the limitations of the described method. In recent years, the electromechanical impedance (EMI) technique has been widely used in structural health monitoring (SHM), such as metal corrosion monitoring [33,34], concrete early-age strength monitoring [35,36], concrete damage assessment [37,38], soil freeze-thaw process monitoring [39,40], and grinding process monitoring [41,42]. The EMI technique has been proved to be feasible for monitoring the repair process of concrete cracks [43].…”

Experimental and numerical investigation of the bonding conditions of piezoelectric sensors under high compressive strains on structures

“…One of these techniques is the electro-mechanical impedance (EMI) technique, which uses smart piezo-based lead zirconate titanate (PZT) transducers to detect structural changes in close proximity. The PZT is an artificial piezoelectric ceramic material that can be molded into thin patches of different shapes depending on the application requirements, such as corrosion monitoring of steel structures (Liu and Feng, 2021), corrosion in embedded reinforcement in concrete (Ahmadi et al, 2021), stiffness of steel joints (Bhalla et al, 2012), damages due to impact on concrete structures (Negi et al, 2019), damages in rocks (Negi et al, 2022), the tension in prestressed cables (Kaur et al, 2021), and integrity of timber structures (Han et al, 2020), etc. The changes in properties of the host structure, which is to be monitored, can be associated with the vibrational characteristics of bonded PZT patches or sensors, such as peak frequencies (Frigui et al, 2018) and peak amplitudes (Bhalla and Kaur, 2018), of impedance signatures.…”

Pitting corrosion prediction based on electromechanical impedance and convolutional neural networks

“…The results show that the real part of SMI can be used as an effective indicator for corrosion damage of steel structures. Liu et al 34 proposed a method for monitoring the thickness loss of stainless steel plates caused by corrosion based on EMI technology. The experimental results show that through the quantitative relationship between the resonant frequency shift in the admittance signatures and the thickness loss, a stable and reliable prediction of the thickness loss of the stainless steel plate can be achieved.…”