Characterization of multiple debris cloud impacts-induced pitting damage evolution in spacecraft structures using temperature-dependent ultrasonic nonlinearity

Abstract

Facing the harsh cryogenic-elevated temperature condition, evaluation of the debris cloud-induced pervasive but highly complex pitting damage in manned spacecraft structures, featuring multitudinous small-scale craters and cracks disorderedly scattered over a wide region, accompanied by a diversity of micro-damages, is hitherto still a challenging task. In line with the fact that the use of ultrasonic nonlinearity is restricted by its intrinsic vulnerability to measurement contamination, in particular temperature fluctuations. With this motivation, an insight into the modulation mechanism of typical elastic parameters of material at macroscopic under varying temperatures, as well as microscopic interatomic potential, is achieved via theoretical analysis. Based on this, temperature sensitivity coefficients (TSCs) of these elastic parameters are obtained, and a nonlinear temperature sensitivity index (TSI) is established. On this basis, an active TSI-based evaluation method is proposed to improve the accuracy and reliability of pitting damage evaluation by controlling detection temperature (i.e., exploitation of the benign aspects of the temperature sensitivity of ultrasonic nonlinearity), rather than eliminating or compensating for its adverse effect, when other nonlinear sources interference. This method is experimentally corroborated, in which the multiple debris cloud impacts-induced accumulated pitting damage are accurately and intuitively characterized through temperature control, in terms of its severity and distribution characteristics, which is consistent with the actual results. These findings provide an active structural health monitoring (SHM) strategy for promoting the practical application of this proposed approach for characterizing pitting damage evolution in manned spacecraft in qualitative and semi-quantitative manners.