Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Gordon Hayward
This paper addresses the major difficulties associated with However, in recent years considerable attention has been
industrial implementation of gas coupled NDE. The influence devoted to the issue of air coupled, or more correctly, gas
of the gas channel on ultrasonic wave propagation is described coupled NDE. Significant improvements have emerged,
with regard to system operating frequency, ultrasonic beam particularly with regard to transducer technology and a
characteristics and possible environmental variables such as number of impressive laboratory demonstrations have been
temperature and pressure. Methods for predicting and reported in the literature. However, most industrial
stabilising ultrasonic system performance are proposed, in requirements are for robust, real time operation with at least
conjunction with transducer design, where emphasis is placed comparable performance to available couplant based
on efficiency for gas operation and the requirement for inspection systems. This is the context in which air coupled
minimisation of electronic intrinsic noise. Techniques for NDE must be appraised and given the physical limitations,
implementing sufficient improvement to enable practical, real represents an extremely difficult task indeed. In the following
time operation are then discussed, including instrumentation sections, the technical difficulties associated with practical
design and signal conditioning requirements. Finally, realisation of gas coupled NDE are discussed in conjunction
examples of robust NDE systems are presented, embracing with possible methods for system implementation in the
through transmission scanning, array based imaging and industrial environment. Overall, the objective is to achieve
multi-frequency Lamb wave scanning. robust real time operation with an adequate signal to noise
ratio and performance to meet a stated requirement. Clearly,
INTRODUCTION a gas coupled NDE system will not ultimately provide the
same level of performance as a properly designed liquid based
Conventional ultrasonic NDE requires some form of coupling counterpart. Consequently, the former is expected to be
medium to facilitate energy transfer between the transducer adopted only where some form of external constraint (such as
and test specimen. This can take the form of a thin gel operating environment or cost) is imposed. However, in such
couplant layer (contact NDE), immersion of the specimen in a limited instances, it will be shown that gas coupled NDE can
liquid bath or the use of water jet columns along which the provide satisfactory performance.
ultrasound can propagate. Although commonplace, such
systems suffer from inherent disadvantages due to the AIR COUPLED TRANSDUCER SYSTEMS
requirement for maintaining an adequate and stable coupling
medium. For example, automated scanning on complex Transducer Technologyfor Gas Coupled Ultrasound
geometries is restricted in contact systems, while the
alternative of immersion may not always be practical, either Recently, there has been considerable expansion in transducer
due to sample bulk or potential damage due to water ingress. technologies for gas coupled ultrasonic applications. For NDE,
In almost all cases, inspection throughput rates are restricted spanning the frequency range 200kHz to SMHz, the three
due to limitations imposed by the coupling mechanism. In principal contenders are piezmramic, piezocomposite and
consequence, it is recognised that removal of the coupling electrostatic devices. In the case of piezoceramic transducers,
medium and its replacement by an intermediate air gap would conventional designs have been modified by the addition of
be advantageous if the appropriate technology became specialised matching layers, usually in conjunction with
available. focusing lenses and high excitation voltages. Such devices
1
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0.05
0.0
I (a)AMBIENT
I pattern is non-uniform (caused by temperature damage) and
this is reflected in the beam profiles shown in Figure 7. In
Figure 7(a), the field structure has been predicted using a
simulation model and the measured displacement data, while
Figure 7(b) shows the measured profile in air using a scanning
a -0.06 . hydrophone. A comparison with Figure 7(c), which illustrates
a
the expected field profile for a uniformly vibrating aperture,
E
g 0.0 . (b) + 2 a c
reveals considerable degradation of the radiated field pattern.
=.E Interestingly, Figure 7(d) shows the predicted field profile
e when the aperture is vibrating with a uniform magnitude and
0.0 - (e)*lOo~C the phase variation shown in Fig 6(b). Although the near field
is now symmetrical, the observed collapse of far field
structure when compared with Fig 7(c) is unacceptable for
most applications. Given that the phase variation across the
aperture is approximately 1.2 radians, equivalent to h/5, this
290.0 300.0 310.0 320.0 result serves to highlight the importance of phase uniformity.
The new generations of electrostatic transducers permit
accurate control of surface properties and should serve to
minimise this problem.
In many cases the standard design rules for estimation of
near/far field boundary and angle of beam divergence have to
be treated with caution, particularly for wideband operation.
This is especially true for those transducers that demonstrate
non-uniform vibration characteristics across the surface, such
as electrostatic devices with polished backplates and certain
piemmposite configurations. In such instances, even
relatively small phase variations across the radiating aperture
can cause the beam profile to deviate substantially from
expectations based around uniform and lossless planar
aperture theory. As an example, consider Figure 5, which
illustrates the axial beam profile characteristics for a 18"
square, 394.5kHz, 40% volume fraction piezocomposite Figure 6: Laser vibrometer measured surface displacement
transducer, operating under gated continuous wave conditions amplitude and phase of 14 mm square, 500 kHz
at the transducer centre frequency. In one case (b) the 20% volume fraction piezocomposite transducer:
transducer field was predicted after laser vibrometer
measurement of the actual aperture profile, while the other (a)
assumes that the aperture is uniform and that the propagation
channel is loss free. Clearly, the former case is much closer to
the experimentally measured profile (c), which in this case
was obtained via a scanning hydrophone.
(a) Predicted from laser vibrometer surface displacement
measurement,
~ o o r m i l l a o t i c ( ~
Figure 5: Axial beam profiles of 18 mm square, 394.5 kHz
40% volume fraction piezocomposite transducer:
0.025
n
presence of temperature differences. Figure 11 shows the
magnitude spectrum obtained when a 25" steel plate was
elevated to a temperature of 15OoC. Two main frequency
Hotplate components are evident, corresponding to the transducer
centre frequency and a resonance. due to the plate thickness. In
this case a pair of 500kHz piezocomposite transducers were
Figure 8. Experimental procedure for high temperature employed at a stand off distance of 33" from the plate
pulse-echo testing surface. The resultant thickness was extracted readily from
the retum spectrum at 25.5mm, which compares well with the
The front surface echo obtained from a steel plate at a actual value.
temperature of 2WoC is shown in Figure 9. A comparison
with Figure 4(a) indicates that there is now little discernible
degradation in the return echo at the elevated temperature.
~~\ transmitter
baffle
I receiver
Hardware
CONCLUDING REMARKS
aslance @mI)
considerable work of others, a viable industrial applications
base may be established in the future.
Figure 14(b) C-scan of carbon fibre plate with 8element
linear array scanning system