Abstract
Recently, guided wave (GW)-based non-destructive evaluation (NDE) techniques have been developed and considered as a potential candidate for integrity assessment of wood structures, such as wood utility poles. However, due to the lack of understanding on wave propagation in such structures, especially under the effect of surroundings such as soil, current GW-based NDE methods fail to properly account for the propagation of GWs and to contribute reliable and correct results. To solve this critical issue, this work investigates the behaviour of wave propagation in the wood utility pole with the consideration of the influence of soil. The commercial finite element (FE) analysis software ANSYS is used to simulate GW propagation in a wood utility pole. In order to verify the numerical findings, the laboratory testing is also conducted in parallel with the numerical results to experimentally verify the effectiveness of developed FE models. Finally, sensitivity analysis is also carried out based on FE models of wood pole under different material properties, boundary conditions and excitation types.
Highlights
Wood utility poles are widely applied to facilitate electricity transmission and distribution all over the world due to easy availability, low cost and environmental protection [1,2]
Experimental testing was conducted to bonded contact, were proposed to simulate the interfacial behaviour between a wood pole and its verify the numerical findings
The results showed that the bonded contact method can produce surrounding soil for guided wave propagation
Summary
Wood utility poles are widely applied to facilitate electricity transmission and distribution all over the world due to easy availability, low cost and environmental protection [1,2]. Sounding is the simplest method for in-situ pole condition assessment, which employs an impact hammer to hit the pole and indicates the void based on a hollow sound. An in-situ utility pole is 12 m long with 1.2–1.5 m embedded length underground, which means that the transmission media of wave in the pole changes from air to soil In this case, the wave behaviour influenced by the transmission media should be considered. To better understand the wave behaviour in the wood pole, the parametric sensitivity analysis is undertaken to investigate the influence of material properties and excitation location on the wave propagation velocity
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