Research / Research News / Nondestructive Testing of Underwater Unmanned Vehicles Using Guided Waves
Dr. Faeez Masurkar, published a paper titled, ‘Nondestructive Testing of Underwater Unmanned Vehicles Using Guided Waves’.
The present study focuses on detection and localization of disbond damage in hybrid composites used in fabricating the outer body structure of autonomous underwater unmanned vehicles (AUVs). This is accomplished by employing ultrasonic guided waves (UGW) generated through piezoelectric transducers (PZTs) that are permanently affixed to the bodies of AUVs. The suitable excitation frequency of ~250 kHz was determined through dispersion analysis and wave-structure analysis. Thereafter, a Gaussian-windowed tone-burst signal centered at 250 kHz was used as an excitation signal to excite ultrasonic guided waves in the submerged structure. Numerical simulations showed the propagation of guided wave modes as well as Scholte waves at the solid-water interface. In disbonded specimens, mode conversion and additional scattered wave packets were seen due to the interaction between the waves and the damage. This interaction allowed for the detection and localization of damage through time-domain signal analysis. Both the simulation and experimental results showed good agreement with a maximum error under 1.5%. Thus, the proposed approach shows strong potential for nondestructive testing (NDT) of underwater AUVs with cost-effective permanently attached PZT sensors.
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