Effect of Crack Closure on Magnitude of Modulated Wave

Abstract

Fatigue cracks generated by repeated loads cause structural failures. Such cracks grow continuously and at an increasing speed owing to the concentration of stresses near the crack tips. Therefore, the early detection of fatigue cracks is imperative in the field of structural-health monitoring for the safety of structures exposed to dynamic loading. In particular, the detection of those cracks subjected to compression is known as a challenging problem in the nondestructive inspection area. The nonlinear ultrasonic modulation technique is effective for the detection of microcracks smaller than the size of a wavelength because this technique uses the deformation of waves passing through the crack surfaces. However, the technique has not been thoroughly verified for detecting cracks subjected to external forces. In this study, nonlinear ultrasonic modulation tests are performed on two types of crack specimens under compressive forces. The results show that in fatigue-cracked specimens, the cracks can be detected using modulated waves even under strong compressions. With artificial cracks, buckling occurs at a relatively low compression, and the amounts of modulated waves rapidly increase due to the bending of the specimen before buckling failure takes place. In this study, the crack detection methodology under compression is proposed and experimentally verified. The proposed method might be beneficial to find cracks under compression in various structural components.