Ultrasonic waves were excited at different frequencies using piezoelectric wafers and the fundamental symmetric (S0) mode was selected to detect the flaws resulting from the welding process. The front of the first transmitted wave signal was used to capture the S0 mode. A damage index (DI) measure was defined based on the amplitude attenuation after wave interaction with the welded zone. Computed Tomography (CT) scanning was employed as a nondestructive testing (NDT) technique to assess the actual weld quality. Derived DI values were plotted against CT-derived flaw volume resulting in a perfectly linear fit. The proposed approach showed high sensitivity of the S0 mode to internal flaws within the weld. As such, this methodology bears great potential as a future predictive method for the evaluation of FSW weld quality. |
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