On-line monitoring of fatigue cracks using ultrasonic surface waves

During the last decade many techniques were developed to detect fatigue cracks, and estimate their location and size. Unfortunately, most of the currently available nondestructive testing methods are off-line: the operational (or fatigue) loading and the inspection are considered as two distinct stages. Mostly, the loading should be released before inspection can take place, and sometimes the device under test even has to be disassembled. In this article, an experimental methodology based on ultrasonic surface waves will be developed to continuously inspect a structure during its operation. The proposed method uses spectral information of transmitted surface waves at several working points of the operational load. Simple statistical indicators of the transmitted wave energy during loading are introduced in order to be able to monitor the structural health on-line. As a validation experiment, a propagating fatigue crack in a sinusoidally loaded beam will be considered. In addition, a comparison with an off-line method is made, showing that the on-line method is also much more sensitive. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.