Structural health monitoring for marine applications using adhesively bonded piezoelectric transducers

  • Ben M Karkera

Student thesis: Master's ThesisMaster of Science by Research (MScR)

Abstract

The transition of Structural Health Monitoring to real-world marine applications remains rare, despite its significant potential for cost-saving. In the absence of established standards and best-practices, there is an increased emphasis on rigorous case-by-case qualification and validation of SHM systems, requiring an understanding of the individual components and methods, as well as the major assumptions and sources of uncertainty.
In order to transition to real-world applications, an important but challenging aspect to assess are the long-term factors affecting system performance. Representative trials are challenging and expensive, as the Structural Health Monitoring application systems they aim to emulate have operational lifespans of many decades.
An investigation is presented that evaluates a simple guided-wave ultrasonic-testing Structural Health Monitoring system. A hybrid Optimal Baseline Subtraction, Baseline Stretch Subtraction approach is adapted to a specific dataset to permit compensation for environmental and operating conditions. The results present two important design consideration for these systems: the exploration of noise suppression performance, the predictability of the behaviour of the system.
Additionally, the presence of a long-term change in the data was identified as the performance-limiting phenomenon observed in existing monitoring data that was collected over multiple years for the dataset used. A trial was undertaken to attempt to simulate long-term system aging effects in an accelerated manner, through the use of high temperature heat-treatment. The results indicate a promising relationship between the behaviours of the system and trends observed in data collected over many years.
In addition to technical considerations for application specific implementations and trials, discussion is given to the non-technical hurdles for industry implementation.
Date of Award12 May 2022
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • University of Bristol
SupervisorPaul D Wilcox (Supervisor) & Anthony J Croxford (Supervisor)

Cite this

'