Numerical and experimental investigations on quasi-static component generation of longitudinal wave propagation in isotropic pipes

Abstract

In this paper, the quasi-static component (QSC) generation of longitudinal waves propagating in an isotropic pipe is investigated numerically and experimentally. The three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) simulations are first carried out to gain physical insights into the characteristics of QSC generation from longitudinal wave travelling in an isotropic pipe with weak material nonlinearity. By applying the axial displacement excitation in the FE model, L(0, 1) mode and L(0, 2) mode are excited simultaneously. Then, the generated QSC pulses are extracted using the phase reversal approach for analysis. It is found that the QSC pulses generated by L(0, 2) mode and L(0, 1) mode are L(0, 1) mode. Meanwhile, the shapes of QSC pulses at different locations are extracted and compared. In this study, a data pre-processing method is proposed to handle numerically calculated and subsequent experimentally measured displacement signals, and a nonlinear acoustic parameter is defined to evaluate the incipient damages. After that, an experiment is conducted to measure the QSCs induced by the propagation of longitudinal waves in an aluminum pipe. The experimental results indicate that the propagation of longitudinal waves in the aluminum pipe can induce the QSCs. Different levels of corrosion are created on the surface of the aluminum pipe and are assessed by the generated QSCs. The results show that the nonlinear acoustic parameter has a monotonically increasing trend with the growing severity of corrosion. The QSCs generated by longitudinal wave can be used to detect and evaluate the early-stage surface corrosion in the aluminum pipe.