Wissenschaftliche Artikel der BAM
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A novel approach for rating fatigue-initiating inclusions in highly demanding steel (INCAFAT)
(2018)
INCAFAT project aimed to improve existing fatigue damage models by establishing the most suitable combination of measurement techniques to characterise harmful inclusion populations in highly demanding steels. The different inclusion assessments carried out confirm that, chemical composition, secondary metallurgy and manufacturing route affect content, nature, size and shape of inclusions. According to the FEM model, inclusions produce an alteration of the stress field in their surrounding region, which can promote a fatigue failure. Experimental work on fatigue testing has demonstrated that depending on the stressed direction fatigue failures in highly demanding steels could be produced by different types of inclusions. Fractography analyses confirmed that meso-inclusions harmful in fatigue cannot be rated by standard methods, nor 10 MHz ultrasonic testing (macro) or micro-cleanness assessments. The necessity of rating these meso-inclusions has led to critical evaluation of Extreme Value Analysis according to ASTM E2283-08 and the development of high frequency immersion ultrasonic testing. EVA methodology based on inclusion width can be applied reliably when principal stress is parallel to the rolling direction. On the contrary, if inclusions are testing in the elongated directions its fails. On the other hand, the guidelines and recommendations for high frequency ultrasonic testing have been compiled in a new European standard draft. This method based on focal beam probes and high-resolution devices is able to provide information on meso-inclusion distribution.
Die Simulation von Ultraschallausbreitung ist ein wesentliches Hilfsmittel zur Optimierung von Prüfanordnungen und wird zunehmend in der Prüfvorbereitung eingesetzt. Eisenbahnschienen sind Bauteile mit komplexer Geometrie und im eingebauten Zustand eingeschränkter Zugänglichkeit. Bei der Prüfung im Feld entstehen aus der Schienengeometrie komplexe Echosignale mit Formanzeigen, die schwer zu interpretieren sind.
Für das bessere Verständnis der Schallausbreitung in der Eisenbahnschiene wird diese in einem ersten Schritt mit Hilfe verschiedener Ansätze modelliert. Hierbei werden Finite Elemente Methoden und semi-analytischen Modelle verwendet. In einem zweiten Schritt werden die Ergebnisse der Simulationsmodelle einander gegenübergestellt und mit Messungen an realen Schienen verglichen.
Ziel dieser Untersuchungen ist die Validierung von Simulationsverfahren mit Hilfe von Messdatensätzen und Überprüfung der Anwendbarkeit bei der Bewertung von Ergebnissen der Schienenprüfung.
Sandwich-Schalenstrukturen in situ charakterisiert mit Thermographie und Felddehnungsmessungen
(2018)
An der BAM wurde ein Schalenprüfstand entwickelt, mit dem typische Sandwichschalenstrukturen unter simulierter Betriebsbeanspruchung belastet werden können. Im mechanischen Ermüdungsversuch wurden in situ die Entstehung von Schäden in Schalenprüfkörpern mit Test-Imperfektionen mittels der passiven Thermographie und Felddehnungsmessungen verfolgt. Damit konnten der Zeitpunkt, der Schadensursprung und der Schadensfortschritt zerstörungsfrei bestimmt werden. Zudem wurden vergleichend Schalenprüfkörper mit Luftultraschall und der Röntgen-Laminographie untersucht. Im Rahmen eines BMWi-Forschungsvorhabens wurden die Schädigungsmechanismen evaluiert und Empfehlungen für die Praxis der Fertigung von Rotorblättern abgeleitet. In diesem Beitrag wird sich auf die Darstellung der ZfP-Verfahren und der ZfP-Ergebnisse konzentriert.
Common air-coupled transducers for non-destructive testing consist of a piezocomposite material and several matching layers. Better acoustical matching to air is achieved by transducers based on charged cellular polypropylene (PP). This material has about hundred times lower acoustic impedance than any piezocomposite, having about the same piezoelectric coefficient. The piezoelectric properties of cellular PP are caused by the polarization of air cells. Alternatively, a ferroelectret receiver can be understood as a capacitive microphone with internal polarization creating permanent internal voltage. The sensitivity of the receiver can be increased by applying additional bias voltage. We present an ultrasonic receiver based on cellular PP including a high-voltage module providing bias voltage up to 2 kV. The application of bias voltage increased the signal by 12 to 15 dB with only 1 dB increase of the noise.
This receiver was combined with a cellular PP transmitter in through transmission to inspect several test specimens consisting of glass-fiber-reinforced polymer face sheets and a porous closed-cell PVC core. These test specimens were inspected before and after load. Fatigue cracks in the porous PVC core and some fatigue damage in the face sheets were detected. These test specimens were originally developed to emulate a rotor blade segment of a wind power plant. Similar composite materials are used in lightweight aircrafts for the general aviation. The other inspected test specimen was a composite consisted of glass-fiber-reinforced polymer face sheets and a wooden core. The structure of the wooden core could be detected only with cellular PP transducers, while commercial air-coupled transducers lacked the necessary sensitivity. Measured on a 4-mm thick carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer plate, cellular PP transducers with additional bias voltage achieved a 32 dB higher signal-to-noise ratio than commercial air-coupled transducers.
Modern and energy-efficient materials are essential for innovative designs for aerospace and automotive industries. Current technologies for rapid manufacturing such as additive manufacturing and liquid composite moulding by polymer Extrusion allow innovative ways of creating robust and lightweight constructions. Commercially available printing devices often use polylactide (PLA) or acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) as raw material. Therefore, parameters like the infill ratio, influencing the ability to resist mechanical stress, may have a beneficial impact on the lifetime of components.
These manufacturing technologies require a good knowledge about materials and even adapted non-destructive testing technologies and methods. Airborne ultrasonic testing has beneficial advantages for testing those lightweight constructions. It is a contact-free testing method, which does not require a liquid couplant. Therefore, it allows fast test cycles without any unwanted alternations of the material properties due to interactions with any coupling liquid. This contribution deals with the characterisation of printed specimens based on PLA by using airborne ultrasound and presents the current edge of non-destructive testing and evaluation using airborne ultrasonic transducers. The specimens, manufactured by polymer extrusion, are printed as thin plates. The infill ratio, as well as the material thickness, were varied to model density imperfections with different geometric shapes and properties. For better understanding of the limits of airborne ultrasonic testing in transmission, we compared own-developed transducers based on different physical principles: on ferroelectrets, on the thermoacoustic effect, as well as a new type of transducers based on gas discharges.
Airborne ultrasonic testing of lightweight, structured composite materials enables fast and contact-free non-destructive testing in aerospace and avoids material degradation due to contact with a coupling liquid. Established resonant air-coupled transducers consist of piezocomposite materials and several matching layers or more advanced materials like charged cellular polypropylene. The relaxation time and the specific frequency of such mechanical ultrasound emitters limit the spectrum of applications for each device. A short pulse length is key for reliable defect detection and each component at test can be best characterized at material- and geometry-specific frequencies. Here we show that focused thermoacoustic transducers are suited for testing lightweight, structured composite plates. Since the ultrasound is generated in air, these transducers show no resonance behavior and emit a broadband acoustic spectrum between 1.2 kHz and 1 MHz. Composite specimens of 3 mm to 9 mm thickness made of polylactide with a honeycomb structure were tested. Flat bottom holes were introduced to quantify the spatial resolution of the imaging method inside the strongly anisotropic specimen. As no broadband receivers are available yet, cellular polypropylene transducers were used as receivers, which limits the bandwidth of the method towards the bandwidth of the receiver. Nevertheless, we demonstrate the competitiveness of the thermoacoustic transducer compared to mechanical emitters at their respective resonance frequencies. Because a thermoacoustic transmitter features a nearly ideal pulse width, a single transmitter can be coupled with receivers with different resonance frequencies. With the development of broadband ultrasound receivers, air-coupled ultrasound spectroscopy will likely be possible in the near future. The analysed transducer holds the potential to speed up testing during production and maintenance in aerospace and automotives. Its combination with a broadband receiver could also expand the application field of air-coupled ultrasonic testing from a qualitative error detection towards a quantitative, spatially resolved analysis of mechanical material properties.
The Scaled Boundary Finite Element Method (SBFEM) is a semi-analytical method that shows promising results in modelling of guided ultrasonic waves. Efficiency and low computational cost of the method are achieved by a discretisation of the boundary of a computational domain only, whereas for the domain itself the analytical solution is used. By means of the SBFEM different types of defects, e.g. cracks, pores, delamination, corrosion, integrated into a structure consisting of anisotropic and isotropic materials can be modelled.
In this contribution, the SBFEM is used to analyse the propagation of guided waves in a structure consisting of an isotropic metal bonded to anisotropic carbon fibre reinforced material. The method allows appropriate wave types (modes) to be identified and to analyse their interaction with different defects. Results obtained are used to develop a structural health monitoring system for composite pressure vessels used in automotive and aerospace industries.
In order to test their suitability different non-destructive methods were performed to inspect a GFRP plate with artificial defects. These defects were manufactured by means of thin PTFE sheets inserted between two plies in three different depth. The inspection methods were microwave reflection, flash thermography and phased array ultrasonics, all applied to the same specimen. Selected results are shown for all methods demonstrating opportunities and limits of the particular inspection methods. The achieved detection limits and further application aspects are compared directly to provide a useful information for the planning of inspection tasks.
Um den sicheren Betrieb von Windkraftanlagen zu gewährleisten, werden Rotorblätter nach der Fertigung und nach Reparatur mit verschiedenen zerstörungsfreien Verfahren auf Schaden untersucht. Bei der Fertigung von Blattschalen, die in einer Sandwich-Schalenbauweise gefertigt werden, entstehen Imperfektionen, die unter Belastung zu großen Rissen führen können. Zur Prüfung von Blattschalen wird unter anderem Ultraschallprüfung in Kontakttechnik eingesetzt. Um den Wartungsaufwand von Ultraschallanlagen zu reduzieren und um manche Kompositstrukturen vor Koppelmittel zu schützen, wird die Anwendung von Luftultraschall erforscht. Insbesondere große Fortschritte gibt es im Bereich der Entwicklung neuer Wandler.
In diesem Beitrag berichten wir über die Luftultraschallprüfung von Schalen für Rotorblätter. Es wurden typische Sandwichschalenstrukturen hergestellt und mit einem eigenentwickelten Schalenprüfstand unter simulierter Betriebsbeanspruchung belastet. Die in den Schalenprüfkörpern entstandenen Schäden wurden außerhalb des Prüfstandes mit Luftultraschall in Durchschallung untersucht. Es wurden fokussierende Wandler auf Basis von Ferroelektreten entwickelt und für diese Prüfungen eingesetzt. Mit zusätzlicher elektrischer Vorspannung konnte die Empfindlichkeit der Empfänger deutlich erhöht werden. Die nach dem Lastwechsel entstandenen Schäden in den Rotorblattschalen waren eindeutig zu detektieren.
Air-coupled ultrasound (ACU) is increasingly used for automated and contactless inspection of large-scale composite structures as well as for non-destructive testing (NDT) of water-sensitive or porous materials. The major challenge to overcome using ACU in NDT is the enormous loss of ultrasonic energy at each solid-air interface caused by the high acoustic impedance mismatch. Resonant low-frequency piezoceramic transducers are specially designed to achieve high sound pressure levels. For an expanded use of this technique, however, the spatial resolution needs to be increased.
Recent studies of our collaborative research group demonstrated the successful application of a resonance-free, highly sensitive receiver that uses a Fabry-Pérot etalon instead of piezoceramic materials or membranes. However, to reach the full potential of this broadband small-aperture optical microphone, novel transmitter concepts have to be developed and evaluated for advanced NDT applications.
Different types of transmitter were tested in combination with the optical microphone acting as receiver and they were compared to conventional piezoceramic transducers in through-transmission mode. Monolithic carbon fiber-reinforced plastics (CFRP) and CFRP sandwich structures containing different defect types were inspected. Presented results are processed as C-scan images and further evaluated for spatial resolution, signal-to-noise ratio and sensitivity of each measurement setup. Novel transmitter concepts, such as ferroelectret and thermoacoustic emitters, show promising findings with a considerably improved time and spatial resolution for ACU-NDT.