Non-contact visualization of nonlinear ultrasonic modulation for reference-free fatigue crack detection

Abstract

This paper presents a fatigue crack detection technique based on visualization of nonlinear ultrasonic wave modulation produced by a fatigue crack. When distinctive low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) inputs are generated and applied to a structure, the presence of a fatigue crack can provide a mechanism for nonlinear ultrasonic modulation and create spectral sidebands around the frequency of the HF signal. In this study, the two input signals are created by two air-coupled transducers (ACT), and the corresponding ultrasonic responses are scanned over a target specimen using a 3D laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV). The crack-induced spectral sidebands are isolated using a combination of linear response subtraction (LRS), and continuous wavelet transform (CWT) filtering. Then, the extracted spectral sideband components are visualized near the fatigue crack. The effectiveness of the proposed non-contact scanning technique is tested using an aluminum plate with a real fatigue crack.