Non-Contact Quantification of Longitudinal and Circumferential Defects in Pipes using the Surface Response to Excitation (SuRE) Method

Abstract

Rapid screening and monitoring of hollow cylindrical structures using active guided-waves based structural health monitoring (SHM) techniques are important in chemical, petro-chemical, oil and gas industries. Successful implementation of the majority of these techniques in the SHM of pipes depends on the identification of the appropriate guided-waves modes and their frequencies for each application. The highly dispersive nature of the guided-waves and presence of multi modes at each frequency makes the mode selection and the interpretation of signals a challenging task. The surface response to excitation (SuRE) method was developed to detect the defects and loading condition changes on plates with minimum dependence on the excitation of particular modes at certain frequencies. In the present study, the SuRE method is proposed for quantification of longitudinal and circumferential defects, with varying severities, as common examples of axisymmetric and nonaxisymmetric defects in pipes. The results indicate that the SuRE method can be used effectively for damage quantification in hollow cylinders.

Keywords

• structural health monitoring
• guided waves
• defect detection
• sure method
• sensor networks
• pipe monitoring