Pipeline thickness estimation using the dispersion of higher-order SH guided waves

Thickness measurement plays an important role in the monitoring of pipeline corrosion damage. However, the requirement for prior knowledge of the shear wave velocity in the pipeline material for popular ultrasonic thickness measurement limits its widespread application. This paper proposes a method that utilizes cylindrical shear horizontal(SH) guided waves to estimate pipeline thickness without prior knowledge of shear wave velocity. The inversion formulas are derived from the dispersion of higher-order modes with the high-frequency approximation. The waveform of the example problems is simulated using the real-axis integral method. The data points on the dispersion curves are processed in the frequency domain using the wave-number method. These extracted data are then substituted into the derived formulas. The results verify that employing higher-order SH guided waves for the evaluation of thickness and shear wave velocity yields less than1% error. This method can be applied to both metallic and non-metallic pipelines, thus opening new possibilities for health monitoring of pipeline structures.

A More Accurate Reconstruction Method for Detecting Large-Depth Defects in Plates Using SH Guided Waves

The inspection of thickness thinning defects and corrosion defects is greatly significant for the health prediction of plate structures.The main aim of this research is to propose a novel and effective approach to achieve the accurate and rapid detection of arbitrary defects using shear horizontal(SH)guided waves,particularly for large-depth and complex defects.The proposed approach combines the quantitative detection of Fourier transform with a reference model-based strategy to improve the accuracy of large-depth defect detection.Since the shallow defect profile is theoretically constructed by inverse Fourier transform of the product of reflection coefficients and integral coefficients of reference models,the unknown large-depth defect can be initially assessed using the relevant information from a predefined reference model.By iteratively updating the integral coefficients of reference models,the accuracy of reconstruction of large-depth defects is much improved.To achieve the converged defect profile,a termination criterion,the root mean square error,is applied to guarantee the construction of defects with a high level of accuracy.Moreover,the hybrid finite element method is used to simulate the propagation of SH guided waves in plates for calculating the reflection coefficients of plates with defects.Finally,to demonstrate the capability of the developed reconstruction method for defect detection in terms of accuracy and efficiency,three types of large-depth defect profiles,i.e.,a rectangular flaw,a double-rectangular flaw and a complex flaw,are examined.Results show that the discrepancy between the predicted defect profile and the real one is quite small,even in the largest-depth defect case where the defect depth is equal to 0.733 times the plate thickness,the minimal difference is observed.It is noted that the fast convergence of the proposed approach can be achieved by no more than ten updates for the worst case.

Single SH guided wave mode generation method for PPM EMATs

Using periodic permanent magnet(PPM)electromagnetic acoustic transducers(EMATs),different shear horizontal(SH)guided wave modes can form simultaneously in some situations,which can interfere with the inspection.The main cause of this phenomenon(typically named multiple modes)is related to the frequency bandwidth of excitation signals and the transducer spatial bandwidth.Simply narrowing the frequency bandwidth cannot effectively limit the number of different SH modes.Previous researches showed that unnecessary SH wave modes can be eliminated by using dual EMATs.However,in practical applications,it is more convenient to change the excitation frequency than to use dual EMATs.In this paper,the stress boundary conditions of the PPM-EMAT are analyzed,the analytical expression of SH guided wave is established,and the magnitude of SH guided wave mode under continuous tone and tone-burst input is obtained.A method to generate a single SH mode by re-selecting an operating point is proposed.Furthermore,the influence of the frequency bandwidth of the tone-burst signal is analyzed.Finally,a single SH mode excitation is achieved with tone-burst input.