• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.1-18
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• 2017

Metal fatigue is an important aging mechanism that material characteristics can be deteriorated when even a small load is applied repeatedly. An accurate fatigue evaluation is very important for component structural integrity and reliability. In the design stage of a nuclear power plant, the fatigue evaluations of the Class 1 components have to be performed. However, operating experience shows that the design evaluation can be very conservative due to conservatism in the transient severity and number of occurrence. Therefore, the fatigue monitoring system has been considered as a practical mean to ensure safe operation of the nuclear power plants. The fatigue monitoring system can quantify accumulated fatigue damage up to date for various plant conditions. The purpose of this paper is to describe the fatigue monitoring procedure and to introduce the fatigue monitoring program developed by the authors. The feasibility of the fatigue monitoring program is demonstrated by comparing with the actual operating data and finite element analysis results.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.393-409
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• 2014

Across-wind response is often the cause of significant structural vibrations that in turn cause fatigue damage to welded and other connections. The efficacy of low-cost helical strakes to mitigate such adverse response is presented for a traffic signal structure. Field observations are made on a prototype structure in a natural wind environment without and with helical strakes installed on the cantilevered arm. Through continuous monitoring, the strakes were found to be effective in reducing across-wind response at wind speeds less than 10 m/s. Estimates of fatigue life are made for four different geographical locations and wind environments. Results for the class of traffic signal structure show that helical arm strakes are most effective in locations with benign wind environments where the average annual wind speed is not more than the vortex shedding wind speed, which for this investigation is 5 m/s. It is concluded that while strakes may be effective, it is not the panacea to mitigating connection fatigue at all locations.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.867-876
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• 2019

Second harmonic generation using nonlinear ultrasonic waves have been shown to be an early indicator of possible fatigue damage in nuclear power plant components. This technique relies on measuring amplitudes, making it highly susceptible to variations in transducer coupling and instrumentation. This paper proposes an experimental procedure for in-situ surface wave nonlinear ultrasound measurements on specimen with permanently mounted transducers under high cycle fatigue loading without interrupting the experiment. It allows continuous monitoring and minimizes variation due to transducer coupling. Moreover, relations describing the effects of the measurement system nonlinearity including the effects of the material transfer function on the measured nonlinearity parameter are derived. An in-situ high cycle fatigue test was conducted using two 304 stainless steel specimens with two different excitation frequencies. A comprehensive analysis of the nonlinear sources, which result in variations in the measured nonlinearity parameters, was performed and the effects of the system nonlinearities are explained and identified. In both specimens, monotonic trend was observed in nonlinear parameter when the value of fundamental amplitude was not changing.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.24 no.3 s.174
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• pp.634-644
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• 2000

Fatigue crack growth and life is estimated by various fracture mechanical parameters but affected by load, material and environment. Fatigue character of component without surface notch cannot be e valuated by above-mentioned parameters due to microstructure of in-service material. Single fracture mechanical parameter or nondestructive parameter cannot predict fatigue damage in arbitrary boundary condition but multiple fracture mechanical parameters or nondestructive parameters can Fatigue crack growth modelling with three point representation scheme uses this merit but has limit on real-time monitoring. Therefore, this study shows fatigue damage model using backpropagatior. neural networks on the basis of X-ray half breadth ratio B/$B_o$ fractal dimension $D_f$ and fracture mechanical parameters can predict fatigue crack growth rate da/dN and cycle ratioN/$N_f$ at the same time within engineering estimated mean error(5%).

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.101-108
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• 2014

About 40% of reactors in the world are being operated beyond design life or are approaching the end of their life cycle. During long-term operation, various degradation mechanisms occur. Fatigue caused by alternating operational stresses in terms of temperature or pressure change is an important damage mechanism in continued operation of nuclear power plants. To monitor the fatigue damage of components, Fatigue Monitoring System (FMS) has been installed. Most FMSs have used Green's Function Approach (GFA) to calculate the thermal stresses rapidly. However, if temperature-dependent material properties are used in a detailed FEM, there is a maximum peak stress discrepancy between a conventional GFA and a detailed FEM because constant material properties are used in a conventional method. Therefore, if a conventional method is used in the fatigue evaluation, thermal stresses for various operating cycles may be calculated incorrectly and it may lead to an unreliable estimation. So, in this paper, the modified GFA which can consider temperature-dependent material properties is proposed by using an artificial neural network and weight factor. To verify the proposed method, thermal stresses by the new method are compared with those by FEM. Finally, pros and cons of the new method as well as technical findings from the assessment are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.600-606
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• 2012

Upon investigation of the damaged wheels for high speed train it was determined that the damage was caused by rolling contact fatigue during operation of train. The major problems that railway vehicle system using wheel-rail has to face during operation of railway vehicle are rolling contact fatigue, cracks in wheels, cracks in rails and wheel-rail profile wear. If these deficiencies are not controlled at early stages the huge economical problems due to unexpected maintenance cost in railway vehicle can be happened. Also, If the accurate knowledge of contact conditions between wheel and rail can be evaluated, the damage of wheel can be prevented and the maintenance operation can save money. This paper presents the applicability of electro-magnetic technique to the detection and sizing of defects in wheel. Under the condition of continuous rolling contact fatigue the damage of wheel has continuously monitored using the applied sensor. It was shown that the usefulness of the applied sensor was verified by twin disc test and the measured damaged sizes showed good agreement with the damaged sizes estimated by electro-magnetic technique.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.93-101
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• 2016

This paper presents the results obtained using time-series-based methods for structural damage assessment. The methods are applied to a wind turbine blade structure subjected to fatigue loads. A 9 m CX-100 (carbon experimental 100 kW) blade is harmonically excited at its first natural frequency to introduce a failure mode. Consequently, a through-thickness fatigue crack is visually identified at 8.5 million cycles. The time domain data from the piezoelectric active-sensing techniques are measured during the fatigue loadings and used to detect incipient damage. The damage-sensitive features, such as the first four moments and a normality indicator, are extracted from the time domain data. Time series autoregressive models with exogenous inputs are also implemented. These features could efficiently detect a fatigue crack and are less sensitive to operational variations than the other methods.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.11
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• pp.918-923
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• 2008

Since crack detection for laminated composites in-service is effective to improve the structural reliability of laminated composites, it have been tried to detect cracks of laminated composites by various nondestructive methods. An electric potential method is one of the widely used approaches for detection of cracks for carbon fiber composites, since the electric potential method adopts the electric conductive carbon fibers as reinforcements and sensors and the adoption of carbon fibers as sensors does not bring strength reduction induced by embedding sensors into the structures such as optical fibers. However, the application of the electric method is limited only to electrically conductive composite materials. Recently, a piezoelectric method using piezoelectric characteristics of epoxy adhesives has been successfully developed for the adhesive joints because it can monitor continuously the damage of adhesively bonded structures without producing any defects. Polymeric materials for the matrix of composite materials have piezoelectric characteristics similarly to adhesive materials, and the fracture of composite materials should lead to the fracture of polymeric matrix. Therefore, it seems to be valid that the piezoelectric method can be applied to monitoring the damage of composite materials. In this research, therefore, the feasibility study of the damage monitoring for composite materials by piezoelectric method was conducted. Using carbon fiber epoxy composite and glass fiber composite, charge output signals were measured and analyzed during the static and fatigue tests, and the effect of fiber materials on the damage monitoring of composite materials by the piezoelectric method was investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.452-458
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• 2013

Impedance based monitoring technique was investigated to evaluate the damage occurring in wind turbine blade. In this study, PVDF film piezo sensors were patched on the 10 kW wind turbine blade, and impedance was measured over the frequency range of 1~200 MHz under fatigue loading. With applying fatigue loads on the blade, change in maximum deflection of the blade and local strain values could be obtained from the strain gages attached on the blade, and difference of the impedance signatures was also observed. From these data, it could be found that local damage or geometrical change in the blade structure happened. To quantitatively compare the impedance signature patterns, a statistical algorithm, scalar damage metric M was used. It was calculated from the impedance signatures considering fatigue loads and location of the sensors. The metric values were compared to correlate the metrics with damage in the blade.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.349-362
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• 2010

Ultrasonic Guided Waves (UGWs) are a useful tool in structural health monitoring (SHM) applications that can benefit from built-in transduction, moderately large inspection ranges and high sensitivity to small flaws. This paper describes a SHM method based on UGWs, discrete wavelet transform (DWT), and principal component analysis (PCA) able to detect and quantify the onset and propagation of fatigue cracks in structural waveguides. The method combines the advantages of guided wave signals processed through the DWT with the outcomes of selecting defect-sensitive features to perform a multivariate diagnosis of damage. This diagnosis is based on the PCA. The framework presented in this paper is applied to the detection of fatigue cracks in a steel beam. The probing hardware consists of a PXI platform that controls the generation and measurement of the ultrasonic signals by means of piezoelectric transducers made of Lead Zirconate Titanate. Although the approach is demonstrated in a beam test, it is argued that the proposed method is general and applicable to any structure that can sustain the propagation of UGWs.