Structural Damage Detection Method Based on Decomposition of the Operating Deflection Shapes

Full-field measurement techniques such as the scanning laser Doppler vibrometer （LDV） and the electronic speckle pattern interferometry systems can provide a dense and accurate vibration measurement on structural operating deflection shape （ODS） on a relatively short period of time.The possibility of structural damage detection and localization using the ODS looks likely more attractive than when using traditional measurement techniques which address only a small number of discrete points.This paper discusses the decomposition method of the structural ODSs in the time history using principal component analysis to provide a novel approach to the structural health monitoring and damage detection.The damage indicator is proposed through comparison of structural singular vectors of the ODS variation matrixes between the healthy and damaged stages.A plate piece with a fix-free configuration is used as an example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the damage detection and localization using the proposed method.The simulation results show that：（1） the dominated principal components and the corresponding singular vectors obtained from the decomposition of the structural ODSs maintain most of all vibration information of the plate,especially in the case of harmonic force excitations that the 1st principal component and its vectors mostly dominated in the system;（2） the damage indicator can apparently flag out the damage localization in the case of the different sinusoidal excitation frequencies that may not be close to any of structural natural frequencies.The successful simulation indicates that the proposed method for structural damage detection is novel and robust.It also indicates the potentially practical applications in industries.

Development of oxide dispersion strengthened ferritic steels with and without aluminum

Pure Fe, Cr, AI, Ti elemental powders and prealloyed Y203 powder were processed by high energy mechanical milling. The compositions of the mixed powders are designed as Fe-18Cr-0.2Ti-0.35Y2O3 and Fe-18Cr-5Al-0.2Ti-0.35Y2O3 in weight percent. The asmilled powders were consolidated by hot extrusion at 1423 K. The dispersed oxide particles were identified to be titania ＋ yttria for Al-free oxide dispersion strengthened （ODS） steel and alumina ＋ yttria for Al-added ODS steel, respectively. The ultimate tensile strength of Al-free ODS steel was higher than that of Al-added ODS steel over the temperature range of 298-973 K, because of the difference in number density and size of thermally stable oxide particles dispersed in both steel matrices. The strength in the longitudinal direction was lower than that in the transverse direction, probably due to anisotropy of the microstructure with elongated grains in the hot-extrusion direction for the 18%Cr-ODS steels with and without 5% Al.

A review of friction stir welding of steels： Tool, material flow, microstructure, and properties

Considerable progress has been achieved in friction stir welding （FSW） of steels in every aspect of tool fab- rication, microstructure control and properties evaluation in the past two decades. With the development of reliable welding tools and precise control systems, FSW of steels has reached a new level of technical maturity. High-quality, long welds can be produced in many engineering steels. Compared to traditional fusion welding, FSW exhibits unique advantages producing joints with better properties. As a result of active control of the welding temperature and/or cooling rate, FSW has the capability of fabricating steel joints with excellent toughness and strength. For example, unfavorable phase transformations that usu- ally occur during traditional welding can be avoided and favorable phase fractions in advanced steels can be maintained in the weld zone thus avoiding the typical property degradations associated with fusion welding. If phase transformations do occur during FSW of thick steels, optimization of microstructure and properties can be attained by controlling the heat input and post-weld cooling rate.