Measuring fluid and slurry density and solids concentration non-invasively

Staff at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a highly sensitive, non-invasive, self-calibrating, on-line sensor to measure the density, speed of sound, and attenuation of ultrasound for a liquid or slurry flowing through a pipeline; the approach can also be applied for measurements made in vessels. The sensor transducers are mounted directly upon the stainless steel wall and the pipeline wall becomes part of the measurement system. Multiple reflections within the stainless steel wall are used to determine the acoustic impedance of the liquid, where the acoustic impedance is defined as the product of the density and the speed of sound. The probe becomes self-calibrating because variations in the pulser voltage do not affect the measurements. This feature leads to the stability of the measurements and the instrument requires much less time and effort to calibrate. Further, the calibration remains constant in time, because it does not depend upon the pulser voltage remaining at a given value. By basing the measurement upon multiple reflections, the sensitivity of the measurement is significantly increased. For slurries with wt% solids concentration of 1% or less, high sensitivity is gained by analyzing attenuation measurements obtained from multiple paths through the slurry. For slurries with higher concentrations of solids, sufficient sensitivity is obtained by analyzing data from a simple transmission. Data are presented that show probe performance for each of these cases: very dilute and highly concentrated kaolin clay slurries.     

Prediction of the vibro-acoustic response of a structure-liner-fluid system based on a patch transfer function approach and direct experimental subsystem characterisation

The vibro-acoustic response of a structure-liner-fluid system is predicted by application of a patch transfer function (PTF) coupling scheme. In contrast to existing numerical approaches, PTF matrices of structure and liner are determined by a direct experimental approach, avoiding the requirement of material parameters. Emphasis is placed on poroelastic lining materials. The method accounts for surface input and next-neighbour transfer terms and for cross and cross-transfer terms through the specimen. Shear stresses and transfer terms to further patches on the liner are neglected. A single test-rig characterisation procedure for layered poroelastic media is proposed. The specimen is considered as a single component – no separation of layers is performed. For this reason the characterisation procedure can serve as a complement to existing methods if separation of layers is not possible and as a tool for validation of more detailed material models. Problem specific boundary conditions for skeleton and fluid, which may cause non-reciprocal cross terms, are dealt with by the procedure. Methods of measurement for the assessment of PTF matrices are presented and their accuracy and limitations are discussed. An air gap correction method for surface impedance measurements is presented.     

Time-varying prediction filter for structural noise reduction in ultrasonic NDE

Predominant physical phenomenon in highly scattering materials is the attenuation due to dispersion. Therefore, received echo has high frequencies more severely attenuated than low frequencies and the structural noise can be modeled as a non-stationary random process. Most of the proposed techniques for enhancing the flaw visibility do not exploit the frequency dependency of the incoming flaw signal, assuming homogeneous behaviour of the insonified material. In this work, a new technique based on exploiting the non-stationary nature of the incoming UT signal is presented. Proposed technique is based on the prediction error obtained with a linear and time-varying parametric model of the noise. By this method, when the analyzed UT echo has only structural noise, the prediction error is low, however, if it contains a flaw, high prediction error occurs because a flaw is a non-predictable alteration of the material structure. Experiments with stainless steel show that this method has an excellent performance on SNR enhancement.     

High precision analysis of finlines on semiconductor substrate

In this study, the effect of the metallization thickness in finlines on semiconcuctor substrate is researched. The propagation parameters are computed to measure the inluence of the metallization. The theory and numerical results are presented to the propagation constant and characteristic impedance of the bilateral and unilateral finlines. The full wave analysis of the transverse transmission line — TTL method is used to determine the electromagnetic fields of the structure in Fourier transform domain — FTD. Applying the suitable boundary conditions, the moment method and expanding the fields in a set of suitable bases functions, a homogeneous matrix system is obtained and the propagation constant is computed. The characteristic impedance is obtained using the relation of the voltage in the slot and the transmitted power by the structure.Computational programs are developed to obtain numerical results to the propagation parameters composed by the propagation constant and characteristic impedance.This work received financial support by CAPES and CNPq.     

套管井超声导波成像系统开发与工程应用研究*

针对现有套管井检测与评价技术存在的缺陷,开展了进一步的导波成像方法与技术开发研究。对套管壁A0导波模式频散与泄漏衰减特性,以及泄漏衰减特性与管外粘结材料特性阻抗的关系进行了分析。在此基础上进行了不同粘结载荷钢板模型A0模泄漏衰减等特性以及脉冲回波厚度共振波特性的实验测试。结果显示,结合A0模式的衰减与管外粘结材料特性阻抗的测试结果,可有效定征管外粘结材料特性,进一步确定和成像管外环形空间水力联通特性。以此为基础,开发了耐温和耐压宽带超声换能器,以及检测与成像系统。通过模型井和实际井的测试,获得良好效果。     

梯度穿缝型双孔隙率多孔材料的吸声性能

在传统单一孔隙率多孔材料中引入宏观尺度的周期性梯度穿缝结构设计,构造出梯度穿缝型双孔隙率多孔材料,其包含多孔材料基体微孔尺度与穿缝尺度两个尺度。采用分层等效的理论建模方法,将复杂梯度渐变问题变为多层均匀等效层叠加问题。针对不同特征尺寸的多孔材料薄层,分别采用低、高两种渗透率对比度双孔隙率理论,给出了其等效密度和动态压缩系数,再应用传递矩阵方法得到了相邻薄层之间的声压和质点速度传递关系并求得其表面声阻抗,从而建立了梯度穿缝型双孔隙率多孔材料的吸声理论模型。发展了多尺度材料声学有限元数值模型,在所考虑的100~3000 Hz频段范围内数值模拟结果完全吻合理论模型结果。理论与模拟分析了多尺度结构参数对双孔隙率多孔材料吸声性能的影响,结果表明引入多尺度梯度结构设计能够显著提高单一孔隙率多孔材料的吸声性能,且穿缝尺度比穿缝梯度影响更为显著;精细数值模拟获得的声压和能量密度分布云图揭示了多尺度结构设计的吸声增强机制。该工作可用于指导双孔隙率多孔材料的多尺度结构设计,从而提高多孔材料的中低频吸声性能。      

Sound absorption performance of gradiently slit-perforated double-porosity materials

A gradiently slit-perforated double-porosity material is proposed by introducing macro-scale periodic gradient slit-perforations into traditional porous materials with singleporosity.This material is one kind of multiscale material since it includes two scales of matrix micro-pore size and slit-perforation size.A theoretical model is developed for the sound absorption of the gradiently slit-perforated double-porosity material.In the model,the material is divided into lots of thin layers and each layer is approximated to be straight slit-perforated material.The equivalent density and dynamic compressibility of each thin layer are given by using the low or high permeability contrast double-porosity theory.Then the sound pressure and particle velocity relations between adjacent thin layers are obtained by employing the transfer matrix method.Finally,the surface acoustic impedance and the sound absorption of the gradiently slit-perforated porous material can be calculated.A finite element model is further established to validate the accuracy of the theoretical model.In the considered frequency range of 100-3000 Hz,the simulation results agree well with theoretical results.The influence of multiscale structural parameters on the sound absorption performance of the porous materials is analyzed theoretically and numerically.It is proved that the multiscale structure design can significantly improve the sound absorption performance of porous materials.Compared to the slit-perforation gradient,the slit-perforation width plays a more significant influence on sound absorption.The sound absorption enhancement mechanism of the multiscale structure design is revealed by the analysis of the sound pressure and energy dissipation distributions in the material.This work provides a multiscale structural design method for improving the sound absorption performance of traditional porous materials at broadband frequency.     

Inverse acoustical characterization of natural jute sound absorbing material by the particle swarm optimization method

For modeling of jute as acoustic material, knowledge of its non-acoustical parameters like porosity, tortuosity, air flow resistivity, thermal and viscous characteristic lengths is a prime requisite. Measurement of these non-acoustical parameters is not straightforward and involves a dedicated measurement setup. So in order to overcome this issue, the inverse acoustical characterization can be used. In this paper, the particle swarm optimization method (PSO) is used as an optimization method. This method estimates the non-acoustical parameters of jute material in felt form by minimizing the error between experimental and theoretical sound absorption data. In this work, the impedance prediction models for fibrous materials like Johnson–Champoux–Allard model with rigid and limp frame and Garai–Pompoli model is used for sound absorption coefficient calculation by the transfer matrix method along with the PSO. The inverse estimated non-acoustical parameters for jute material are then compared with estimated and experimentally measured parameters for jute felts. Using these inversely predicted parameters, sound absorption of multilayer sound absorbers is also studied.     

Modelling and simulation of acoustic wave propagation in locally resonant sonic materials

Sonic crystals are artificial structures consisting of a periodic array of acoustic scatterers embedded in a homogeneous matrix material, with a usually large impedance mismatch between the two materials. They exhibit strong sound attenuation at selective frequency bands due to the interference of multiply reflected waves. However, sound attenuation bands in the audible range are only achieved by unfunctionally large sonic crystals. If local resonators are used instead of simple scatterers, the frequencies of the attenuation bands can be reduced by about two orders of magnitude. In the present paper we perform numerical simulations of acoustic wave propagation through sonic crystals consisting of local resonators using the local interaction simulation approach (LISA). Three strong attenuation bands are found at frequencies between 0.3 and 6.0 kHz, which do not depend on the periodicity of the crystal. The results are in good qualitative agreement with experimental data. We analyze the dependence of the resonance frequencies on the structural parameters of the local resonators in order to create a tool for design and optimization of any kind of sonic crystal.     

纵向极化与磁化叠层复合材料磁电效应理论及计算

基于纵向极化压电材料及纵向磁化磁致伸缩材料的压电和压磁方程与磁电元件运动方程,给出磁电元件开路电压表达式;鉴于压电材料高输出阻抗的特点,考虑测试仪器的有限输入阻抗和传输信号引线电缆电容,通过建立等效电路模型推出了非开路情况下磁电电压计算式,取不同材料参数对磁电电压进行了数值计算.研究表明,材料参数、电路参数对输出电压均产生影响.对磁伸材料两端面受非均匀偏置磁场产生外力的非自由边界磁电效应进行研究发现,恒外力作用使压电元件产生不可检测的稳恒电压. 关键词： 纵向极化 磁电效应 磁电元件 层叠材料     

Ultrasonic inspection of grain size in the materials for railway wheel sets

This work outlines the present theory of attenuation of the ultrasonic waves, particularly the theory of scattering, and describes the measurement of attenuation in metals. Experiments were carried out to measure the attenuation of samples with different grain size taken from materials for railway wheel sets; in these experiments the pulse echo method, with elimination of the effect of the reflexion factor, was applied. The article presents the relation between the overall attenuation coefficient and its scattering component, the grain size and frequency.

On the basis of our measurements and an analysis of the obtained results, two methods of evaluation of the structure of railway materials by ultrasonic inspection were derived.     

Determination of acoustic impedances of multi matching layers for narrowband ultrasonic airborne transducers at frequencies <2.5 MHz - Application of a genetic algorithm

The effective ultrasonic energy radiation into the air of piezoelectric transducers requires using multilayer matching systems with accurately selected acoustic impedances and the thickness of particular layers. One major problem of ultrasonic transducers, radiating acoustic energy into air, is to find the proper acoustic impedances of one or more matching layers. This work aims at developing an original solution to the acoustic impedance mismatch between transducer and air. If the acoustic impedance defences between transducer and air be more, then finding best matching layer(s) is harder. Therefore we consider PZT (lead zirconate titanate piezo electric) transducer and air that has huge acoustic impedance deference. The vibration source energy (PZT), which is used to generate the incident wave, consumes a part of the mechanical energy and converts it to an electrical one in theoretical calculation. After calculating matching layers, we consider the energy source as layer to design a transducer. However, this part of the mechanical energy will be neglected during the mathematical work. This approximation is correct only if the transducer is open-circuit. Since the possibilities of choosing material with required acoustic impedance are limited (the counted values cannot always be realized and applied in practice) it is necessary to correct the differences between theoretical values and the possibilities of practical application of given acoustic impedances. Such a correction can be done by manipulating other parameters of matching layers (e.g. by changing their thickness). The efficiency of the energy transmission from the piezoceramic transducer through different layers with different thickness and different attenuation enabling a compensation of non-ideal real values by changing their thickness was computer analyzed (base on genetic algorithm). Firstly, three theoretical solutions were investigated. Namely, Chebyshev, Desilets and Souquet theories. However, the obtained acoustic impedances do not necessarily correspond to a nowadays available material. Consequently, the values of the acoustic impedances are switched to the nearest values in a large material database. The switched values of the acoustic impedances do not generally give efficient transmission coefficients. Therefore, we proposed, in a second step, the use of a genetic algorithm (GA) to select the best acoustic impedances for matching layers from the material database for a narrow band ultrasonic transducer that work at frequency below the 2.5 MHz by considering attenuation. However this bank is rich, the results get better. So the accuracy of the propose method increase by using a lot of materials with exact data for acoustic impedance and their attenuation, especially in high frequency. This yields highly more efficient transmission coefficient. In fact by using increasing number of layer we can increase our chance to find the best sets of materials with valuable both in acoustic impedance and low attenuation. Precisely, the transmission coefficient is almost equal to unity for the all studied cases. Finally the effect of thickness on transmission coefficient is investigated for different layers. The results showed that the transmission coefficient for air media is a function of thickness and sensitive to it even for small variation in thickness. In fact, the sensitivity increases when the differences of acoustic impedances to be high (difference between PZT and air).     

基于电润湿微棱镜技术的可调光衰减器特性分析

利用电控改变固液界面湿润角的电润湿微棱镜(EMPs)技术以及双自聚焦透镜组合设计了一类新颖的可调光衰减器,并对该衰减器的衰减性能进行了原理分析和实验测量.理论分析和实验结果表明其具有良好的光衰减控制效应,在不大的电压变化范围(例如135—139V)内即可实现2—60dB的光衰减范围.该器件构思新颖,具有结构简单、容易制作的优点,经过优化后将会在光通信领域得到广泛的应用.缺点是工作电压偏高,需要进一步筛选出介电系数高的物质来作为介电绝缘层材料,以便降低工作电压,达到实际可以使用的目的. 关键词： 微流控光学 电湿效应 可调光衰减器 电润湿微棱镜     

Drain-induced barrier lowering effect for short channel dual material gate 4H silicon carbide metal—semiconductor field-effect transistor

Sub-threshold characteristics of the dual material gate 4H-SiC MESFET (DMGFET) are investigated and the analytical models to describe the drain-induced barrier lowering (DIBL) effect are derived by solving one- and two- dimensional Poisson’s equations. Using these models, we calculate the bottom potential of the channel and the threshold voltage shift, which characterize the drain-induced barrier lowering (DIBL) effect. The calculated results reveal that the dual material gate (DMG) structure alleviates the deterioration of the threshold voltage and thus suppresses the DIBL effect due to the introduced step function, which originates from the work function difference of the two gate materials when compared with the conventional single material gate metal-semiconductor field-effect transistor (SMGFET).     

Thermally affected characterization region by Barkhausen noise

The controlling of some industrial components require the development of new and particular nondestructive testing techniques. The testing method using Barkhausen noise (BN) is a particular one which can be applied to ferromagnetic materials. It is a magnetic nondestructive evaluation method and can provide very important information about the material structure. The aim of our work is to study the material structure using this technique to characterize the region submitted to thermal processing. Samples of steel have been heated at temperatures between 650 degrees C and 1,200 degrees C with variable parameters (time processing, maintenance time, etc.). Acoustic BN processing allows an easy interpretation of results. Micrographs of samples have been obtained to confirm the results obtained by BN.     

Homogeneous sound-absorbing structures for aircraft engine ducts

As applied to the ducts of aircraft engines, a new method is studied for extending the frequency range of sound absorption by using special homogeneous materials of a rigid structure. A through- or blind-hole perforation of such a homogeneous material is for the first time suggested with a view to substantially extend its capabilities. A theory is developed for sound-absorbing structures of perforated homogeneous material that allows for computing their wave parameters and impedance on the basis of those of the starting material. Based on this theory, one can calculate the impedance of any, no matter how complex a structure built up of several layers differing in thickness and perforation percentage and diameter. The results of calculations made for the impedance and sound absorption coefficient of single and multiple layer samples show good agreement with experimental data.     

Impedance measurements around grazing incidence for nonlocally reacting thin porous layers

For locally reacting materials with a constant surface impedance, a classical method based on the work of Chien and Soroka [J. Sound Vib. 43, 9-20 (1975)] for measuring this impedance in situ around grazing incidence is currently used. A generalization of this work to include thin nonlocally reacting materials with a surface impedance noticeably dependent on the angle of incidence is performed. It is shown that the model by Chien and Soroka can be used, though the constant surface impedance must be replaced by the impedance at grazing incidence for the evaluation of the numerical distance. Measurements performed on a thin porous layer using this method are compared with measurements performed using the near-field acoustical holography method [M. Tamura, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 88, 2259-2264 (1990)]. Other measurements performed on a fibrous layer are in good agreement with the predicted values of the impedance at grazing incidence.     

Fabrication and evaluation of fully-sampled, two-dimensional transducer array for "Sonic Window" imaging system

A low-cost, fully-sampled, 3600 element 2D transducer array operating at 5 MHz and designed for use in a hand-held ultrasound system is described here. Four array configurations are presented - (1) array with both matching and pedestal backing layers, (2) array with a matching layer but no backing pedestal, (3) array with a backing pedestal but no matching layer, and (4) array with neither matching layer nor backing pedestal. Each array was characterized in terms of impedance measurements, pulse-echo response, and experimental beamprofile. Comparative finite element analysis simulations are also presented. Average estimated active element yield for the four arrays was 94%. The array with pedestal layer proved the most promising, providing a 26% bandwidth and a 1.7 dB improvement in sensitivity with respect to the array with neither pedestal nor matching layer. Although this bandwidth is acceptable for our specific application (C-scan imaging), reverberations within the substrate material remain a potential challenge. We are currently working to fabricate a custom PCB material to address this concern, and may also consider using a pre-compensated transmit waveform or matched digital filter approach to further reduce the effects of such reverberations.     

同轴高功率超宽带功分器研究

 运用同轴结构,研制出高功率超宽带功分器,采取先阻抗变换,再功分的形式,以简化机械加工难度。运用高频仿真软件进行仿真分析,研制出一分为二和一分为四的功分器,再组合成为一分为八的功分器,高压实验表明该功分器能耐高压,驻波测试表明阻抗匹配较好,从测量的传输参数可以看出输出各端口幅度一致性较好。证明了该高功率超宽带功分器可以用作实际的高功率天线阵列。     

Thermal melting and ablation dynamics on a femtosecond laser-heated highly-oriented pyrolytic graphite surface

Time-resolved optical reflection microscopy studies demonstrate spatiotemporal dynamics of melting and ablation of graphite surface molten by single IR femtosecond laser pulses, which are revealed by monitoring picosecond oscillations of the probe reflectivity modulated by transient acoustic reverberations in the surface melt. Temporal periods and amplitudes of the reverberations are affected through transient variations of melt thickness and acoustic impedance by melting, thermal expansion, spallation and fragmentation processes, thus enabling quantitative evaluation of their contributions and basic parameters.