Lamb wave ultrasonic evaluation of welded AA2024 specimens at tensile static and fatigue testing

Abstract

The paper deals with the investigation of Lamb waves ultrasonic testing technique applied for evaluation of different stress-strain and damaged state of aluminum specimens at static and fatigue loading in order to develop a Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) approach. The experimental results of tensile testing of AA2024T3 specimens with welded joints are presented. Piezoelectric transducers used as actuators and sensors were adhesively bonded to the specimen's surface using two component epoxy. The set of static and cyclic tensile tests with two frequencies of acoustic testing (50 kHz and 335 kHz) were performed. The recorded signals were processed to calculate the maximum envelope in order to evaluate the changes of the stress-strain state of the specimen and its microstructure during static tension. The registered data are analyzed and discussed in terms of signal attenuation due to the formation of fatigue defects during cyclic loading. Understanding the relations between acoustic signal features and fatigue damages will provide us the ability to determine the damage state of the structure and its residual lifetime in order to design a robust SHM system.