Analysis of blasting damage in adjacent mining excavations

Following a small-scale wedge failure at Yukon Zinc＇s Wolverine Mine in Yukon, Canada, a vibration monitoring program was added to the existing rockbolt pull testing regime. The failure in the 1150 drift occurred after numerous successive blasts in an adjacent tunnel had loosened friction bolts passing through an unmapped fault. Analysis of blasting vibration revealed that support integrity is not compromised unless there is a geological structure to act as a failure plane. The peak particle velocity（PPV） rarely exceeded 250 mm/s with a frequency larger than 50 Hz. As expected, blasting more competent rock resulted in higher PPVs. In such cases, reducing the round length from 3.5 m to 2.0 m was an effective means of limiting potential rock mass and support damage.

In-service Structural Health Monitoring of a Full-scale Composite Horizontal Tail

In-service structural health monitoring（SHM） technologies are critical for the utilization of composite aircraft structures. We developed a Lamb wave-based in-service SHM technology using built-in piezoelectric actuator/sensor networks to monitor delamination extension in a full-scale composite horizontal tail. The in-service SHM technology combine of damage rapid monitoring（DRM） stage and damage imaging diagnosis（DID） stage allows for real-time monitoring and long term tracking of the structural integrity of composite aircraft structures. DRM stage using spearman rank correlation coeffi cient was introduced to generate a damage index which can be used to monitor the trend of damage extension. The DID stage based on canonical correlation analysis aimed at intuitively highlighting structural damage regions in two-dimensional images. The DRM and DID stages were trialed by an in-service SHM experiment of CFRP T-joint. Finally, the detection capability of the in-service SHM technology was verified in the SHM experiment of a full-scale composite horizontal tail. Experimental results show that the rapid monitoring method effectively monitors the damage occurrence and extension tendency in real time; damage imaging diagnosis results are consistent with those from the failure model of the composite horizontal tail structure.

Crack monitoring using multiple smart materials;fiber-optic sensors&piezo sensors

This article focuses on health monitoring of structures using multiple smart materials.In this research,two fiber-optic sensors,namely fiber Bragg grating(FBG)and fiber-optic polarimetric sensor(FOPS),are investigated for damage detection in the beam specimen.FBG is used for local strain measurement while FOPS is used for global strain measurement.Both FBG and FOPS show significant changes in the strain due to damages in the specimen.Also,at the center of the specimen,piezoelectric wafer active sensor(PWAS)is attached.The electromechanical admittance(EMA)signature of the specimen beam is recorded by PWAS.The changes in the amplitudes of the peaks obtained at various frequencies in this EMA signature are analyzed,and it is shown that the peak amplitudes respond differently to damages and to change in loading.Thus,multiple smart materials(FBG,FOPS,and PWAS)are used to get improved information on the health of the beam.