TY - JOUR A1 - Maack, Stefan A1 - Küttenbaum, Stefan A1 - Epple, Niklas A1 - Aligholizadeh, M. T1 - Die Ultraschall-Echomethode – von der Messung zur bautechnischen Kenngröße T1 - Ultrasonic Echo Method - Deriving structural parameters from measured values N2 - Zerstörungsfreie Prüfverfahren liefern wichtige Informationen zur Beurteilung von Bauwerken. Mit ihnen können Materialeigenschaften bestimmt oder die innere Struktur von Bauteilen beschrieben werden. Für letzteres werden in der Regel Volumenverfahren angewandt. Einen besonderen Stellenwert haben in der Praxis die Radar- und die Ultraschall-Echoverfahren. Ihre Anwendung erfordert lediglich eine einseitige Zugänglichkeit zum Bauteil. Zudem lassen sich zahlreiche unterschiedliche Prüfaufgaben lösen. Zum Stand der Technik gehören beispielsweise die Ortung von Bewehrung und Spannkanälen, die Bestimmung der Dicke von Bauteilen oder die Fehlerlokalisierung. In diesem Beitrag wird gezeigt, wie mithilfe von Ultraschall-Echomessungen gesammelte Messwerte in ein quantitatives Messergebnis überführt werden können, das wiederum in ingenieurtechnische Berechnungen einfließen kann. Einleitend werden die Prüfmethode und die Messtechnik erläutert. Anschließend wird das Vorgehen von der Auswertung der Messergebnisse bis zur Bestimmung der bautechnischen Kenngröße – Bauteildicke – gezeigt. Abschließend wird die Methodik an einem Referenzprüfkörper aus Polyamid demonstriert und den Ergebnissen von Messungen an Beton gegenübergestellt. KW - Zerstörungsfreie Prüfung KW - Ultraschall-Echoverfahren KW - Messunsicherheit KW - Bildgebende Darstellung KW - Schallgeschwindigkeit PY - 2021 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-521113 DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/best.202000091 VL - 116 IS - 3 SP - 200 EP - 211 PB - Ernst & Sohn AN - OPUS4-52111 LA - deu AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bühling, Benjamin A1 - Maack, Stefan A1 - Schweitzer, T. A1 - Strangfeld, Christoph T1 - Enhancing the spectral signatures of ultrasonic fluidic transducer pulses for improved time-of-flight measurements N2 - Air-coupled ultrasonic (ACU) testing has proven to be a valuable method for increasing the speed in non-destructive ultrasonic testing and the investigation of sensitive specimens. A major obstacle to implementing ACU methods is the significant signal power loss at the air–specimen and transducer–air interfaces. The loss between transducer and air can be eliminated by using recently developed fluidic transducers. These transducers use pressurized air and a natural flow instability to generate high sound power signals. Due to this self-excited flow instability, the individual pulses are dissimilar in length, amplitude, and phase. These amplitude and angle modulated pulses offer the great opportunity to further increase the signal-to-noise ratio with pulse compression methods. In practice, multi-input multi-output (MIMO) setups reduce the time required to scan the specimen surface, but demand high pulse discriminability. By applying envelope removal techniques to the individual pulses, the pulse discriminability is increased allowing only the remaining phase information to be targeted for analysis. Finally, semi-synthetic experiments are presented to verify the applicability of the envelope removal method and highlight the suitability of the fluidic transducer for MIMO setups. KW - Air-coupled ultrasound KW - Fluidics KW - Signal processing KW - Pulse compression KW - MIMO KW - Hilbert transform PY - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-537853 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ultras.2021.106612 SN - 0041-624X VL - 119 SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Elsevier B.V. CY - Amsterdam, Netherlands AN - OPUS4-53785 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Strangfeld, Christoph A1 - Bühling, Benjamin A1 - Hauke, M. A1 - Schweitzer, T. A1 - Maack, Stefan T1 - Frequency modulated, air-coupled ultrasound generated by fluidic oscillators N2 - The majority of ultrasonic devices used for non-destructive testing in civil engineering require contact with the surface of the concrete (specimen), which significantly increases the time required for the measurement. This makes it impractical for extensive investigation of large-scale structures such as bridge decks, foundations, or tunnels. In a pioneering approach, fluidic oscillators are used as contact free ultrasonic sources to overcome the aforementioned limitations. These robust and cost-effective actuators require only pressurised air and are ideally suited for harsh environments. At a constant supply pressure, they generate a continuous mono-frequent actuation signal. Further, varying the supply pressure via a fast pressure regulator was found to generate a frequency modulated signal which enabled time-of-flight measurement with an added advantage of increased signal to noise ratio. To demonstrate the feasibility of this novel idea of non-contact ultrasound, the results of the initial tests are presented. T2 - IEEE International Ultrasound Symposium CY - Venice, Italy DA - 11.10.2022 KW - Air-coupled ultrasound KW - Frequency modulation KW - Non-destructive testing KW - Civil engineering KW - Building materials KW - Fluidic oscillators PY - 2022 DO - https://doi.org/10.1109/IUS54386.2022.9958740 SP - 1 EP - 4 AN - OPUS4-56073 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bühling, Benjamin A1 - Maack, Stefan A1 - Strangfeld, Christoph T1 - Using sonic crystals to separate the acoustic from the flow field of a fluidic transducer N2 - Ultrasonic testing is a widely applied measurement method in materials research and medicine. Commonly, a transducer is coupled to the specimen directly or via a liquid coupling agent. While reducing acoustic transmission losses significantly, this procedure is time-consuming and cannot be used for sensitive specimens. Air-coupled ultrasound is a viable alternative in such cases, although suffering from very high acoustic transmission losses between transducer, air and specimen. The recently introduced fluidic transducer (FT) generates ultrasound by utilizing the instability of a supersonic air jet switched inside a fluidic amplifier. Since only air is used as the working medium and no vibrating surfaces are used for ultrasound generation, the transducer is able to efficiently generate large acoustic pressure amplitudes. The resulting acoustic field shares its directivity with the ejected high-velocity air jet. Thus, the acoustic energy needs to be redirected from the jet axis in order to make the fluidic transducer applicable to sensitive specimens. In this study, the effectivity of using sonic crystals (SCs) for this redirection is investigated using acoustic and flow measurements. SCs are air-permeable while being reflective to large acoustic frequency bands. It was shown that both a defect waveguide and a mirroring strategy successfully redirected the acoustic field from the air jet. Furthermore, the interaction of flow and SC showed strong acoustic quenching if the SC was placed too close to the FT outlet. Blockage of the jet entrainment due to the SC may result in slightly higher off-axis flow velocities locally, which should be considered in sensitive applications. KW - Air-coupled ultrasound KW - Sonic crystal KW - Fluidics KW - Non-destructive testing KW - Metamaterial KW - Bandgap quenching PY - 2022 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apacoust.2021.108608 SN - 0003-682X VL - 189 SP - 1 EP - 7 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam AN - OPUS4-54205 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bühling, Benjamin A1 - Küttenbaum, Stefan A1 - Maack, Stefan A1 - Strangfeld, Christoph T1 - Development of an Accurate and Robust Air-Coupled Ultrasonic Time-of-Flight Measurement Technique N2 - Ultrasonic time-of-flight (ToF) measurements enable the non-destructive characterization of material parameters as well as the reconstruction of scatterers inside a specimen. The time-consuming and potentially damaging procedure of applying a liquid couplant between specimen and transducer can be avoided by using air-coupled ultrasound. However, to obtain accurate ToF results, the waveform and travel time of the acoustic signal through the air, which are influenced by the ambient conditions, need to be considered. The placement of microphones as signal receivers is restricted to locations where they do not affect the sound field. This study presents a novel method for in-air ranging and ToF determination that is non-invasive and robust to changing ambient conditions or waveform variations. The in-air travel time was determined by utilizing the azimuthal directivity of a laser Doppler vibrometer operated in refracto-vibrometry (RV) mode. The time of entry of the acoustic signal was determined using the autocorrelation of the RV signal. The same signal was further used as a reference for determining the ToF through the specimen in transmission mode via cross-correlation. The derived signal processing procedure was verified in experiments on a polyamide specimen. Here, a ranging accuracy of <0.1 mm and a transmission ToF accuracy of 0.3μs were achieved. Thus, the proposed method enables fast and accurate non-invasive ToF measurements that do not require knowledge about transducer characteristics or ambient conditions. KW - Air-coupled ultrasound KW - Laser Doppler vibrometer KW - Refracto-vibrometry KW - Acousto-optic effect KW - Time-of-flight measurements KW - In-air ranging KW - Non-destructive testing PY - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-544711 DO - https://doi.org/10.3390/s22062135 VL - 22 IS - 6 SP - 1 EP - 17 PB - MDPI CY - Basel, Switzerland AN - OPUS4-54471 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maack, Stefan A1 - Küttenbaum, Stefan A1 - Bühling, Benjamin A1 - Niederleithinger, Ernst T1 - Low frequency ultrasonic dataset for pulse echo object detection in an isotropic homogeneous medium as reference for heterogeneous materials in civil engineering N2 - The dataset presented contains ultrasonic data recorded in pulse echo mode. The investigated specimen is made of the isotropic homogeneous material polyamide and has a drill hole of constant diameter running parallel to the surface, which was scanned in a point grid using an automatic scanner system. At each measuring position, a pitch-catch measurement was performed using a sampling rate of 2 MHz. The probes used are arrays consisting of a spatially separated receiving and in-phase transmitting unit. The transmitting and receiving sides each consist of 12 point-shaped single probes. These dry-point contact (DPC) probes operate according to the piezoelectric principle at nominal frequencies of 55 kHz (shear waves) and 100 kHz (longitudinal waves), respectively, and do not require a coupling medium. The measurements are performed with longitudinal (100 kHz) and transverse (55 kHz) waves with different geometric orientations of the probe on the measurement surface. The data presented in the article provide a valid source for evaluating reconstruction algorithms for imaging in the low-frequency ultrasound range. KW - Non-destructive testing KW - Ultrasound KW - Pulse-echo method KW - Reference material KW - Reconstruction algorithm KW - Validation PY - 2022 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-547326 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2022.108235 VL - 42 SP - 1 EP - 11 PB - Elsevier Inc. AN - OPUS4-54732 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Maack, Stefan A1 - Küttenbaum, Stefan A1 - Bühling, Benjamin A1 - Borchardt-Giers, Kerstin A1 - Aßmann, Norman A1 - Niederleithinger, Ernst T1 - Low frequency ultrasonic pulse-echo datasets for object detection and thickness measurement in concrete specimens as testing tasks in civil engineering N2 - The dataset contains raw data gathered with the ultrasonic pulse-echo method on concrete specimens. The surfaces of the measuring objects were automatically scanned point by point. Pulse-echo measurements were performed at each of these measuring points. The test specimens represent two typical testing tasks in construction industry: the detection of objects and the determination of dimensions to describe the geometry of components. By automating the measurement process, the different test scenarios are examined with a high repeatability, precision and measuring point density. Longitu- dinal and transversal waves were used and the geometrical aperture of the testing system was varied. The low-frequency probes operate in a range of up to approximately 150 kHz. In addition to the specification of the geometrical dimensions of the individual probes, the directivity pattern and the sound field characteristics are provided. The raw data are stored in a universally readable format. The length of each time signal (A-scan) is two milliseconds and the sampling rate is two mega-samples per second. The provided data can be used for comparative studies in signal analysis, imag- ing and interpretation as well as for evaluation pur- poses in different, practically relevant testing scenarios. KW - Validation KW - Puls-echo method KW - Ultrasonic KW - Non-destructive testing KW - SAFT KW - Reconstruction algorithm PY - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-575185 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2023.109233 SN - 2352-3409 VL - 48 SP - 1 EP - 16 PB - Elsevier Inc. AN - OPUS4-57518 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Gebauer, D. A1 - Gutiérrez, R, A1 - Marx, S. A1 - Butler, M. A1 - Grahl, K. A1 - Thiel, T. A1 - Maack, Stefan A1 - Küttenbaum, Stefan A1 - Pirskawetz, Stephan A1 - Breit, W. A1 - Schickert, M. A1 - Krüger, M. T1 - Interrelated dataset of rebound numbers, ultrasonic pulse velocities and compressive strengths of drilled concrete cores from an existing structure and new fabricated concrete cubes N2 - Two test series were examined using nondestructive measuring methods by six independent laboratories before determining their compressive strength. The nondestructive test methods used were the rebound hammer and ultrasonic pulse velocity measurement. Two types of geometries were investigated: drilled cores and cubes. The measurement procedure for each of these datasets is conditioned to the geometry and is therefore different. The first series consists of 20 drilled cores (approximately diameter/height = 10 cm/20 cm) from the 55-year-old Lahntal Viaduct near Limburg, Germany. After preparation in the first laboratory, the lateral surface of the drilled cores was tested with the rebound hammer using a given pattern. Every laboratory tested every drilled core at different locations. Ultrasonic measurements in transmission were performed repeatedly at predefined points on the flat surfaces of the specimen. The second series consisted of 25 newly manufactured concrete cubes of a mix with a target concrete strength class of C30/37. The edge length was 15 cm. Each laboratory received five specimens of this test series. Thus, contrary to the first series, each specimen was tested by only one laboratory. Two side faces of each cube were tested with the rebound hammer. In addition, ultrasonic measurements were performed by one laboratory. The time of flight was measured between the tested side faces of the rebound hammer at different positions. For both series, rebound hammers were used to determine the R-value as well as the Q-value. The rebound hammer models within the laboratories were always the same, while they differed between the laboratories. The ultrasonic measurements took place with different measurement systems and couplants. Finally, both specimen series were tested destructively for compressive strength. The dataset contains the raw data summarized in tabular form. In addition, relevant calculated data are included in some cases. For the ultrasonic measurements, the time of flight has already been converted into the ultrasonic velocity. Besides, in addition to the raw data of the compressive strength test (force, weight, and geometry values), the calculated compressive strengths and densities are also provided. KW - Nondestructive testing KW - Ultra sound KW - Rebound hammer KW - Existing structure KW - Civil engineering PY - 2023 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-574655 DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2023.109201 SN - 2352-3409 VL - 48 IS - 109201 SP - 1 EP - 13 PB - Elsevier Inc. AN - OPUS4-57465 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bühling, Benjamin A1 - Maack, Stefan T1 - Improving onset picking in ultrasonic testing by using a spectral entropy criterion N2 - In ultrasonic testing, material and structural properties of a specimen can be derived from the time-of-flight (ToF). Using signal features, such as the first peak or envelope maximum, to calculate the ToF is error-prone in multipath arrangements or dispersive and attenuating materials, which is not the case for the signal onset. Borrowing from seismology, researchers used the Akaike information criterion (AIC) picker to automatically determine onset times. The most commonly used formulation, Maeda's AIC picker, is reassessed and found to be based on inappropriate assumptions for signals often used in ultrasonic testing and dependent on arbitrary parameters. Consequently, an onset picker for ultrasonic through-transmission measurements is proposed, based on a spectral entropy criterion (SEC) to model the signal using the AIC framework. This SEC picker takes into account the spectral properties of the ultrasonic signal and is virtually free of arbitrary parameters. Synthetic and experimental data are used to compare the performance of SEC and AIC pickers. It is shown that the accuracy of onset picking is improved for densely sampled data. KW - Akaike information criterion picker KW - Nondestructive testing KW - Ultrasound KW - Time of flight PY - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-594284 UR - https://pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/article/155/1/544/3061576/Improving-onset-picking-in-ultrasonic-testing-by DO - https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0024337 SN - 0001-4966 VL - 155 IS - 1 SP - 544 EP - 554 PB - AIP Publishing CY - Melville, NY, USA AN - OPUS4-59428 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bühling, Benjamin A1 - Maack, Stefan A1 - Strangfeld, Christoph T1 - Fluidic Ultrasound Generation for Non‐Destructive Testing N2 - AbstractAir‐coupled ultrasonic testing (ACU) is a pioneering technique in non‐destructive testing (NDT). While contact testing and fluid immersion testing are standard methods in many applications, the adoption of ACU is progressing slowly, especially in the low ultrasonic frequency range. A main reason for this development is the difficulty of generating high amplitude ultrasonic bursts with equipment that is robust enough to be applied outside a laboratory environment. This paper presents the fluidic ultrasonic transducer as a solution to this challenge. This novel aeroacoustic source uses the flow instability of a sonic jet in a bistable fluidic switch to generate ultrasonic bursts up to 60 kHz with a mean peak pressure of 320 Pa. The robust design allows operation in adverse environments, independent of the operating fluid. Non‐contact through‐transmission experiments are conducted on four materials and compared with the results of conventional transducers. For the first time, it is shown that the novel fluidic ultrasonic transducer provides a suitable acoustic signal for NDT tasks and has potential of furthering the implementation of ACU in industrial applications.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved KW - Aeroacoustics KW - Air-coupled ultrasound KW - Fluidics KW - Harsh environment KW - Laser Doppler vibrometer KW - Non-destructive testing PY - 2024 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-594273 DO - https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202311724 SN - 0935-9648 SP - 1 EP - 14 PB - Wiley AN - OPUS4-59427 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -