Multiple cases of the source localization for aluminum plate based on beamforming method with rectangular sensor network in wave velocity
Abstract
A novel beamforming array technique and probability-based diagnostic imaging method are proposed to determine the acoustic emission (AE) source in plate-like structures. The technique that differs from common beamforming array techniques, in particular a sensor network, is used instead of a linear sensor array, to highlight information on the AE source location in one coordinate system as energy distribution. To reduce the uncertainty, avoid the boundary reflection effect, and ensure the rationality of the signal superposition, a Hilbert transform-based signal processing is applied before the delay-and-sum algorithm and a probability-based diagnostic imaging method is developed for AE source localization. The finite element numerical simulation method and the pencil-lead-broken experiment on aluminum plate are also conducted, and a thin-walled cylinder pipe-like structure is also tested by the pencil-lead-broken experiment to develop the application of the proposed method in various fields. The results indicate that this method is efficient and capable of visually showing the localization results highlighted in the probability images.
Keywords
- acoustic emission
- source localization
- beamforming
- probability-based diagnosticimaging
- plate-like structure
- health monitoring
1. Introduction
Plate-like structures are widely used in a variety of fields, such as material, civil, aerospace, and other industries [1–5]. Confirming the health condition of these plate-like structures is a very meaningful assignment for engineers. One of the various non-destructive techniques, acoustic emission (AE) monitoring is arguably based on the simplest of physical concepts: the release of transient elastic waves in solid materials as a result of a localized source of damage [2–4]. The process of locating the source of these acoustic waves by capturing the related propagating acoustic signals through various sensors or arrays and properly analyzing them is commonly known as the AE source localization technique [3–8]. Common passive monitoring techniques are currently applied for AE source localization in isotropic and anisotropic structures, particularly in two-dimensional plate-like structures [9,10].
The techniques for AE source localization, such as triangulation technique, modal AE, and optimization-based technique, are currently performed by accurately determining the exact time of arrival (TOA) or time difference of arrival (TDOA) [8]. An obvious disadvantage of these methods is that the precision of the time difference measurement has a great effect on the location precision. To avoid this problem, McLaskey et al. [11] introduced a novel beamforming method of AE analysis, which is particularly suited for field applications on large plate-like reinforced concrete structures, such as walls and bridge decks. The advantage of the beamforming technique is that it does not require the TOA or TDOA of a specific wave mode; the technique can therefore handle noisy signals if the noise is a Gaussian white noise. He et al. [12] applied the beamforming technique for source localization in a thin steel plate through finite element (FE) simulation and experiment. Nakatani et al. [13] studied AE source localization on an anisotropic structure and proved that the technique is simple but effective.
Beamforming has been successfully used in source localization by many researchers, but its limitation as a technique is that it is a velocity-dependent method [11]. As such, its localization accuracy and precision are significantly influenced by the propagation characteristics. The propagation characteristics of an AE signal in plate-like structures are complex because of the signal’s repeated reflection in the interface. The wave speed is affected by many factors, such as frequencies, material properties whether isotropic or not, multi-mode, and the dispersion in the propagation process. Xiao et al. [14] proposed a novel beamforming method with two uniform linear arrays in determining the AE source location using an unknown wave speed to reduce the effect of the factors (mentioned earlier) on AE beamforming. However, the accurate two-dimensional position cannot be shown at the same time in one coordinate system, because the localization coordinates are correct along the direction parallel to the array but not along the direction perpendicular to the array.
2. Principle of Lamb wave propagation
The Lamb waves are used to interrogate the whole thickness of the plate-like structures. Either the surface defects or the internal damages can be detected.
2.1. The dispersion characteristic of Lamb wave
Since Lamb waves are waves of plane strain that occur in a free plate, only displacements through the thickness (x3 direction) and in the direction of wave propagation (x1 direction) are taken into consideration (Figure 1).
Eq. (1) is for the symmetric Lamb wave mode (
where the parameters
Where
The phase velocity dispersion curves can be solved by Eqs. (1) and (2). And, the group velocity dispersion curves can be plotted from the phase velocity dispersion curves using Eq. (3). The group velocity and phase velocity dispersion curves for an aluminum plate are shown in Figure 2(a and b).
2.2. Finite element simulation
Numerical simulation is another main method aside from experimental validation that is used in various fields. Modeling the guided waves conveniently provides modeled data with a high signal-to-noise ratio, which can be used to develop useful advanced signal processing and analysis techniques. A number of numerical methods have been applied to analyze the propagation of elastic waves, such as the finite element method (FEM), finite difference method, boundary element method, and finite strip elements (FSE), all of which have their respective merits and defects. FEM is best understood from its practical application, known as finite element analysis (FEA). FEA is a computational tool for performing engineering analysis. It includes the use of mesh generation techniques for dividing a complex problem into small elements, which in turn represent different areas in the physical system; the technique also uses a software program coded with the FEM algorithm. This study simulates the guided wave signal propagation with FEA in the general three-dimensional domain using the commercial package ABAQUS, which has some advantages and is effective. It easily records the solution results of every element or node by time step and extracts results. In addition, it provides sophisticated pre- and post-processing functions and is user-friendly. Many scholars have demonstrated the possibility of using FEM to solve the guided wave formation and guided wave signal propagation in plate specimens.
2.2.1. Explicit dynamic analysis
The explicit dynamics analysis procedure, ABAQUS/Explicit, is based upon the implementation of an explicit integration rule together with the use of diagonal (“lumped”) element mass matrices. The equations of motion for the body are integrated using the explicit central-difference integration rule.
Where
The explicit procedure integrates through time by using many small time increments. The central-difference operator is conditionally stable, in order to avoid numerical instability, there are more than 20 points per cycle of the highest frequency. Therefore, the time step can be expressed as follows [17]:
where
The size of the finite element is depended on the smallest wavelength. In reference [17], it is recommended that 20 nodes per wavelength be used. So that, it can be expressed as
where
In the present FEM analysis,Δ
2.2.2. Excitation signal
In the finite element modeling, the excitation signal is a smoothed tone burst obtained by filtering a five-cycle pure tone burst of central frequency
The number of counts
The smoothed tone burst is governed by the following equation:
2.2.3. Selective excitation of Lamb wave modes
Dual piezoelectric (PZT) actuators are symmetrically mounted on the top and bottom surfaces of a plate, and the frequencies of excitation signals are controlled to a range so as to generate the fundamental symmetric mode S0 and anti-symmetric mode A0 only. This mode selection technique can be expressed as:
When either of the dual PZTs is energized, both the symmetric mode S0 and the anti-symmetric mode A0 will be generated simultaneously.
When dual PZTs are in-phase energized, the symmetric mode S0 with the most signal energy is generated, meanwhile, the anti-symmetric mode A0 is weaker.
When dual PZTs are out-phase energized, the anti-symmetric mode A0 is generated to dominate the majority of wave energy, and the symmetric mode S0 is suppressed.
In the FEM, a 1200 mm × 1200 mm aluminum plate with 4 mm thickness was used for the simulation. Because the piezoelectric element C3D8E doesn’t exist in ABAQUS/explicit; so we applied 16 self-equilibrating concentrated forces, as shown in Figure 5., to simulate the wave excitation for the round PZT actuators. The mode excitation method is expressed as follows:
When the 16 self-equilibrating concentrated forces are loaded on the top or the bottom of a plate, both S0 mode and A0 mode are excited simultaneously.
When the 16 self-equilibrating concentrated forces are symmetrically loaded on the top and the bottom of a plate, the mode S0 will be excited.
When the 16 self-equilibrating concentrated forces are anti-symmetrically loaded on the top and the bottom of a plate, the mode A0 will be excited. The excited Lamb wave modes are shown in Figure 6(a–c).
2.2.4. Lamb wave scattering simulations
2.2.4.1. The interaction of the S0 mode with a circular hole
It is well known that mode conversion phenomena will occur when the incident S0 mode wave interacts with damages; there will be S0 mode, A0 mode, and SH0 mode waves in the scattering fields.
When the depth of the hole is through thickness, the scattering S0 mode and SH0 mode can be captured.
When the depth is 75% of the thickness, the scattering S0 mode, A0 mode, and SH0 mode can be captured.
The snapshots of S0 mode interaction with a circular hole are shown in Figure 7 and Figure 8, respectively.
2.2.4.2. The interaction of the S0 mode with a crack
When the incident S0 mode wave interacts with a crack, the crack-induced scattering wave components are same as a circular hole. The snapshots of S0 mode interaction with a crack are shown in Figure 9.
3. Beamforming algorithm for damage identification
3.1. Principle of the beamforming network method
The beamforming technique is a method based on the delay-and-sum algorithm. Figure 10
shows that an acoustic event causes an AE source to generate an acoustic wave, which is received by M sensors. Given the difference between the distance of the sensors and that of the sound source, the arrival time must also differ. Although different degrees of attenuation exist on the wave energy, waveform parameters, such as frequency, duration, and the peak of the same sound source remain almost same. The beamforming technique adjusts different sensor waveform signals to the same datum point by time delay to ensure that the entire waveform signal is adjusted to the same wave front. The sensors network output of incident waves in an isotropic plate is expressed by Eq. (11). The variable
Here the variable
3.2. Hilbert transform-based signal processing
Given the propagation of the elastic wave in materials, the reflection and scattering of signals result in mode conversion, which goes against waveform processing. Research findings have shown that an energy distribution curve with pure signal superposition is not continuous, as shown in Figure 11(a). Beamforming technology needs only the necessary amplitude information and does not require the full waveform information. Thus, to reduce the uncertainty, avoid the boundary reflection effect, ensure the rationality of the superposition, and obtain a smooth curve, the envelopes of the signals obtained using Hilbert transform (HT)-based signal processing
3.3. Probability-based diagnostic imaging
Given the existence of errors and uncertainty, the real location of the sound source is likely to be where the energy is larger (near the maximum). Thus, a probability diagnostic imaging technology is introduced to explain the results from the perspective of probability theory. After determining the energy distribution, the structure under detection is meshed using L × K nodes for probability-based diagnostic imaging; this technique is an emerging technique for monitoring the health status of a structure and identifying damages and has attracted much attention in recent years [19, 20]. It uses an easily interpretable image whose pixels exclusively correspond to the spatial points to describe the health status of the structure. The field value of a pixel stands for the probability of the presence of damage at the point of the structure corresponding to the pixel, and the degree of probability is often calibrated through different gray scales. In this study, the normalized energy distribution can be regarded as the probability of the AE source location. When the normalized energy distribution focuses on a peak under the correct circumstances, it is similar to the Gaussian distribution. Thus, a cumulative distribution function,
where
The normalized energy and probability distributions of AE localization results are shown in Figure 11(d).
4. FE model of AE simulation
A sketch of the FE model with the geometric configuration 800 mm × 600 mm × 4 mm is shown in Figure 12. The homogeneous isotropic aluminum plate is characterized by the following: Young’s modulus
The AE wave is a common form of the Lamb wave propagation in plate-like structures. In most cases, multiple Lamb modes exist simultaneously, and the dispersive properties of such modes are not identical even for the same mode in different frequency ranges [21]. Different mode waves travel with different groups and phase velocities. As a consequence, source localization strategies must be conducted based on a certain wave propagation mode. The fundamental symmetric mode S0 wave and the fundamental asymmetric mode A0 wave are popularly used in plate-like structures. The localization results are presented using S0 mode wave, given that the propagation velocity of the S0 mode is faster than that of the A0 mode and considering the interception of the first wave packet analyzed in this study. The dispersion curve in Figure 13 shows that the propagation speed of the S0 mode Lamb wave with a frequency of 400 KHz in 4 mm unconstrained aluminum plate is about 4600 m/s.
4.1. Localization results of the numerical simulation
To verify the validity of the positioning, three cases of real sound sources were tested using the delay-and-sum algorithm with the precise wave speed. Their real coordinates were as follows: case A (360 mm, 250 mm), case B (750 mm, 550 mm), and case C (600 mm, 50 mm). The localization results for the rectangular sensor network are exhibited in Table 1.
The results show that under the true known wave speed, the beamforming array technique and probability-based diagnostic imaging method can confirm the location of the AE source and produce accurate positioning results, as highlighted in the floor plan image. The case away from boundaries can evidently work much better than the cases close to boundaries, given the same wave speed. The results also prove that HT-based signal processing and probability-based diagnostic imaging are reasonable and effective.
4.2. The influence of the wave speed
The localization results in Table 1 show that the beamforming technique can effectively confirm the location of the AE source and produce accurate positioning results, as highlighted in the floor plan image. However, it is a wave-velocity-dependent method; a clear limiting factor of this technique is the need to obtain knowledge on its wave propagation speed. For common, uniform, and thick plate materials, we generally find out the dispersion curve to determine the required wave velocity, following the theory of wave propagation. However, given the structure size, material properties, or performance degradation factors, ensuring the dispersive curves of the Lamb wave is not easy, so the sound source localization of the plate structure in the case of unknown wave velocity must be discussed.
According to beamforming theory, the largest impact of wave velocity lies on the length of delay. Under a real wave velocity, signals can be achieved through accurate time delay adjustment to the same wave front, the superposition of energy concentrated, and the maximum output reached. In calculating a wave velocity that is far from the true wave velocity, the energy is unable to concentrate and the peak isn’t the maximum. This finding can be proven by Figure 14.
The larger the deviation from the real wave velocity, the higher the divergence of the energy; the smaller the deviation from the real wave velocity, the more concentrated the stack power. The normalized energy peak curves of the FE model under different wave speeds are shown in Figure 15. When the wave speed is 4700 m/s, the peak of the energy is at its maximum, so that the real wave velocity is around 4700 m/s. At this rate, the localization can also be confirmed by comparing the energy distribution or peak value under the different wave speeds, with no need for the known real wave velocity.
5. Experimental verification
To further verify the effectiveness of AE source localization using beamforming network technology for plate-like structures, a pencil-lead-broken experiment on an aluminum plate and a steel cylinder experiment are implemented.
5.1. Aluminum plate experiment
The size of the aluminum plate adopted in the experiment was 1000 mm × 1000 mm × 4 mm. It was a homogeneous isotropic aluminum plate with the following characteristics: Young’s modulus
According to the chapter 3.1 mentioned method, the normalized energy peak curves of experimental aluminum plate under different wave speeds were shown in Figure 17. The AE propagation speed was about 5200 m/s. The localization results for the rectangular sensor network are exhibited in Table 2.
5.2. Thin-walled steel cylinder experiment
For a thin-walled cylinder with a large radius, the propagation characteristics of the Lamb wave are the same as those of plate-like structure [22]. Thus, this study constructed a sensor network in conformity to a plate on a steel thin-walled cylinder to verify the effectiveness of the beamforming method for AE source localization. The cylinder had an inner radius, external radius, and height of 102, 110, and 700 mm, respectively, and was characterized by the following: Young’s modulus
6. Conclusion
This study investigates AE source localization in plate-like structures using the beamforming network method and probability-based diagnostic imaging. Some conclusions based on the analysis of the localization results are drawn below.
(1) The beamforming technique is effective for AE source localization without the TOA or TDOA. Unlike other localization techniques, it is simple because it avoids the acquirement of detailed information on signals. Through the beamforming network algorithm, the AE source location information is highlighted in one coordinate system as energy distribution.
(2) An HT-based signal processing method was developed. The testing results demonstrate that the HT-based signal processing method is reasonable and capable of obtaining the energy distribution information of the AE source. Moreover, a probability diagnostic imaging technology is introduced to improve localization accuracy. The field value of a pixel stands for the probability of the presence of damage at the point of the structure corresponding to the pixel, and the degree of probability is often calibrated through different gray scales.
(3) When the wave speed is known, the beamforming technique can accurately determine the source localization, no matter how far away from or close it is to the boundaries of the structure. Even if the wave velocity is unknown, the localization can also be confirmed by comparing the energy distribution or peak values under different wave speeds, as proven accurately in this study.
(4) The algorithm can also be applied to AE source localization in thin-walled steel cylinders pipe-like structure. However, its applicability in long axial length structures is yet to be verified.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the financial support from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant numbers 51278083, 51478079, and Science and Technology Project of Fujian Province (Grant number 2012Y01010047).
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