科创中国

The fundamental shear horizontal(SH0) wave has several unique features that are attractive for long-range nondestructive testing(NDT). By a careful design of the geometric configuration, electromagnetic acoustic transducers(EMATs) have the capability to generate a wide range of guided wave modes, such as Lamb waves and shear-horizontal(SH) waves in plates. However, the performance of EMATs is influenced by their parameters. To evaluate the performance of periodic permanent magnet(PPM) EMATs, a distributed-line-source model is developed to calculate the angular acoustic field cross-section in the far-field. Numerical analysis is conducted to investigate the performance of such EMATs with different geometric parameters, such as period and number of magnet arrays, and inner and outer coil widths. Such parameters have a great influence on the directivity of the generated SH0 waves that arises mainly in the amplitude and width of both main and side lobes. According to the numerical analysis, these parameters are optimized to obtain better directivity. Optimized PPM EMATs are designed and used for NDT of strip plates. Experimental results show that the lateral boundary of the strip plate has no perceivable influence on SH0-wave propagation, thus validating their used in NDT. The proposed model predicts the radiation pattern of PPM EMATs, and can be used for their parameter optimization.

For planning optimum multiple stresses accelerated life test plans, a commonly followed guiding principle is that all parameters of the life-stress relationship should be estimated, and the number of the stress level combinations must be no less than the number of parameters of the life-stress relationship. However, the general objective of an accelerated life test(ALT) is to assess the p-th quantile of the product life distribution under normal stress. For this objective, estimating all model parameters is not necessary, and this will increase the cost of test. Based on the theoretical conclusion that the stress level combinations of the optimum multiple stresses ALT plan locate on a straight line through the origin of coordinate, it is proposed that a design idea of planning the optimum multiple stresses ALT plan through transforming the problem of designing an optimum multiple stresses ALT plan to designing an optimum single stress ALT plan. Moreover, a method of planning the optimum multiple stresses ALT plan which can avoid estimating all model parameters is established. An example shows that, the proposed plan which only has two stress level combinations could achieve an accuracy no less than the traditional plan, and save the test time and cost on one stress level combination at least; when the actual product life is less than the design value, even the deviation of the model initial parameters value is up to 20%, the variance of the estimation of the p-th quantile of the proposed plan is still smaller than the traditional plans approximately 25%. A design method is provided for planning the optimum multiple stresses ALT which uses the statistical optimum degenerate test plan as the optimum multiple stresses accelerated life test plan.

Eddy current pulsed thermography(ECPT) is an emerging Non-destructive testing and evaluation(NDT & E) technique, which uses hybrid eddy current and thermography NDT & E techniques that enhances the detectability from their compensation. Currently, this technique is limited by the manual selection of proper contrast frames and the issue of improving the efficiency of defect detection of complex structure samples remains a challenge. In order to select a specific frame from transient thermal image sequences to maximize the contrast of thermal variation and defect pattern from complex structure samples, an energy driven approach to compute the coefficient energy of wavelet transform is proposed which has the potential of automatically selecting both optimal transient frame and spatial scale for defect detection using ECPT. According to analysis of the variation of different frequency component and the comparison study of the detection performance of different scale and wavelets, the frame at the end of heating phase is automatically selected as an optimal transient frame for defect detection. In addition, the detection capabilities of the complex structure samples can be enhanced through proper spatial scale and wavelet selection. The proposed method has successfully been applied to low speed impact damage detection of carbon fibre reinforced polymer(CFRP) composite as well as providing the guidance to improve the detectability of ECPT technique.