Nondestructive inspection of metal specimen using tone-burst vibro-acoustography

• Published in: Ultrasonics Vol. 111; p. 106339
• Main Authors: Marció, Bruno Silva, Seibert, Artur Antonio, Braz, Guilherme de Araújo, Carneiro, Antonio Adilton Oliveira, Flesch, Rodolfo C.C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier B.V 01-03-2021
• Subjects: Metal structure inspection; Nondestructive testing; Pulse-echo technique; Vibro-acoustography technique; Metal structure inspection; Pulse-echo technique; Nondestructive testing; Vibro-acoustography technique
• ISSN: 0041-624X; 1874-9968
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ultras.2020.106339

•Vibro-acoustography presented great performance for metal structures assessment.•Vibro-acoustography technique was able to detect all the specimen surface defects.•The presence of artifacts affected the quality of vibro-acoustography images.•Relatively low error values were presented by vibro-acoustography technique.
Even though the pulse-echo ultrasonic technique is commonly used for the assessment of metal structures, it has some inherent limitations. Vibro-acoustography (VA) is a relatively new ultrasonic technique which has demonstrated a great potential in revealing defects in objects, however it is traditionally used to analyze the integrity of specimens made of low-stiffness materials. This work presents the evaluation of the performance of VA technique for the inspection of a steel structure, which was manufactured with defects of known geometry on its inner surface. All the inspection process was done automatically, from the data acquisition to the image processing for characterizing the defects. Experimental results show that VA was able to identify and characterize even the smallest defects in the structure, with a diameter of 2 mm. In addition, the results show that VA was able to characterize the artificial defects in the steel structure with almost the same errors as the traditional pulse-echo method, which indicates a potential use of VA in the inspection of materials with high mechanical stiffness.