sensors-19-01848PublishedOnlineVersion.pdf (5.86 MB)
Characterization and design improvement of a thickness-shear lead zirconate titanate transducer for low frequency ultrasonic guided wave applications
journal contribution
posted on 2019-04-24, 11:00 authored by Marco Zennaro, Daniel O'BoyDaniel O'Boy, Premesh S. Lowe, Tat-Hean GanThickness-shear transducers for guided wave testing have been used in industry for over two decades and much research has been conducted to improve the resolution and sensitivity. Due to a geometric feature of the current state-of-the art transducer, there is an out-of-plane component in the propagation direction of the fundamental shear horizontal mode which complicates the signal interpretation. In such case, complex signal processing techniques need to be used for mode discrimination to assess the structural health with higher precision. Therefore, it is important to revise the transducer design to eliminate the out-of-plane components in the propagation direction of fundamental shear horizontal mode. This will enhance the mode purity of fundamental shear horizontal mode for its application in guided wave inspection. A numerical investigation has been conducted on a 3 mm thick 2 m circular steel plate to understand the behaviour and the characteristics of the state-of-the-art thickness-shear transducer. Based on the results, it is noted that the redesigning the electrode arrangement will suppress the out-of-plane components on the propagation direction of the fundamental shear horizontal mode. With the aid of this information current state-of-the-art transducers were redesigned and tested in laboratory conditions using the 3D Laser Doppler Vibrometer. This information will aid future transducer designers improve the resolution of thickness-shear transducers for guided wave applications and reduce the weight and cost of transducer array by eliminating the need of additional transducers to suppress spurious modes.
Funding
This research was funded by Lloyd’s Registered Foundation and Loughborough University, grant number [30335], and the APC was funded by Loughborough University and Brunel Innovation Centre.
History
School
- Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
- Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering
Published in
SensorsVolume
19Issue
8Citation
ZENNARO, M. ... et al, 2019. Characterization and design improvement of a thickness-shear lead zirconate titanate transducer for low frequency ultrasonic guided wave applications. Sensors, 19 (8), 1848.Publisher
MDPI AG © The AuthorsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Acceptance date
2019-04-11Publication date
2019Notes
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).ISSN
1424-8220eISSN
1424-8220Publisher version
Language
- en