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Lamb waves have become a focal point in ultrasonic testing owing to their potential for long-range and inaccessible detection. However, accurately estimating the flaws in plates using Lamb waves remains challenging because of scattering, mode conversion, and dispersion effects. Recent advances in laser ultrasonic wave techniques have introduced innovative visualization methods that exploit the dispersion effect of Lamb waves to visualize defects via, for example, acoustic wavenumber spectroscopy. In this study, we developed an interdigital transducer (IDT)-based scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) system without a power amplifier using a low-power IDT fabricated from lead magnesium niobate–lead zirconate titanate single crystals. To validate the proposed low-power IDT-based SLDV, four different defective plates were measured for defects. A comparison between a conventional IDT-based SLDV, a dry-coupled IDT-based SLDV, and the proposed method demonstrated that the latter is highly reliable for measuring thin plate defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we investigate the potential of cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) as a non-contact excitation device, comparing its performance with an ultrasound transmitter. Utilizing a scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV), we visualize the acoustic wavefront generated by a CAP probe and an ultrasound sensor within a designated 50 mm × 50 mm area in front of each probe. Our focus lies in assessing the applicability of a CAP probe for exciting a small polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) sample. By adjusting the dimensions of the sample to resonate at the excitation frequency of the probe, we can achieve high vibrational velocities, enabling further mechanical analysis. In contrast with traditional vibration excitation techniques such as electrodynamical shakers and hammer impact excitation, a plasma probe can offer distinct advantages without altering the structure's dynamics since it is contactless. Furthermore, in comparison with laser excitation, plasma excitation provides a higher power level. Additionally, while pressurized air systems are applicable for limited low frequencies, plasma probes can perform at higher frequencies. Our findings in this study suggest that CAP is comparable with acoustic excitation, indicating its potential as an effective mechanical excitation method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metal structural plates are extensively used in various engineering structures due to their high strength, high-temperature resistance, toughness, and plasticity. However, they are susceptible to damage from external loads and impacts over time. The current Lamb wave detection methods suffer from dispersion and multimodal effects, leading to ineffective identification of damage information. In this paper, we investigate Lamb wave propagation in steel structure plates with flat-bottomed holes using a sinusoidal modulation five-peak wave signal. Finite element numerical models are developed, and an experimental platform is constructed using steel and aluminum boards. Experimental data is collected using a Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometer (SLDV, PSV-500, Polytec Inc., Baden-Württemberg, German). The results demonstrate that, under the same frequency, the damage reflection energy for different modes is distinct. By fusing the data from the two modes, more accurate damage imaging results are obtained in the frequency-wavenumber (f-k) domain compared to single-mode imaging. Furthermore, experiments are conducted to locate damage in a steel board with a through hole and an aluminum plate with double flat-bottomed holes, confirming the feasibility of the proposed algorithm in isotropic plates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdigital transducer (IDT)-based scanning laser Doppler vibrometers (SLDVs) have recently been developed to detect shallow defects in plates. An IDT-based SLDV was augmented with Lamb wave frequency fusion capability to enable the imaging of defects across the entire depth of a plate. Dry-coupled IDTs are a type of field-deployable IDT that do not require the attachment of a couplant to the structure. However, this technique is not applicable to the analysis of shallow wall thinning, because IDTs composed of lead zirconium titanate (PZT) cannot be attached to the curved surface of a structure. To address this issue, we developed a new type of IDT—the flexible IDT—that can be bent along the circumferential direction of a pipe. To set the gap spacing of the flexible IDT, the wavenumber sensitivity and minimum distance from the reference mode (MDRM) was calculated, and the S 0 mode is selected to ensure high-wavenumber sensitivity above the threshold of the MDRM. The proposed flexible IDT-based SLDV was tested by using it to visualize the wall thinning on pipes with 4%, 6%, and 20% thinning. The results of this study will contribute toward the development of systems that improve on existing planar laser scanning schemes and enable shallow defect detection in pipes using laser ultrasonics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a machine learning approach to localizing a five-peak narrow-band modulated sinusoidal signal excitation source within a composite panel. In particular, the Back Propagation (BP) neural network is used. The idea is to use the arrival time of the first wave packet in a five-peak wave signal to locate their source. Specifically, this paper divides the composite material board into multiple regions, designs 8 receiving points to receive the signal from the excitation source, and finds the region where each source is located. The COMSOL numerical simulation platform is used to build a composite plate model and simulate the propagation of five-peak waves to train and test the machine learning network. Correspondingly, carry out experimental verification and use a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) to build a non-contact experimental platform to obtain the wave field information in the composite material plate. The results show that BP neural networks can learn to map signal features to their sources in both contexts.

Metal structural plates are extensively used in various engineering structures due to their high strength, high-temperature resistance, toughness, and plasticity. However, they are susceptible to damage from external loads and impacts over time. The current Lamb wave detection methods suffer from dispersion and multimodal effects, leading to ineffective identification of damage information. In this paper, we investigate Lamb wave propagation in steel structure plates with flat-bottomed holes using a sinusoidal modulation five-peak wave signal. Finite element numerical models are developed, and an experimental platform is constructed using steel and aluminum boards. Experimental data is collected using a Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometer (SLDV, PSV-500, Polytec Inc., Baden-Württemberg, German). The results demonstrate that, under the same frequency, the damage reflection energy for different modes is distinct. By fusing the data from the two modes, more accurate damage imaging results are obtained in the frequency-wavenumber (f-k) domain compared to single-mode imaging. Furthermore, experiments are conducted to locate damage in a steel board with a through hole and an aluminum plate with double flat-bottomed holes, confirming the feasibility of the proposed algorithm in isotropic plates.

The present paper comprehensively investigates the complex interaction between ultrasonic guided waves and local structural discontinuities, such as damages, through highly sensitive features: so-called wave damage interaction coefficients (WDICs). These WDICs are unique for each structural discontinuity and depend solely on their characteristics for a given structure and condition. Thus, they can be particularly useful for advanced assessment of lightweight structures in the context of non-destructive evaluation and structural health monitoring. However, the practical application of WDICs entails significant difficulties due to their sensitivity and complex patterns. Therefore, this study attempts to guide researchers and practitioners in the estimation of WDICs from numerical simulations and physical experiments. Detailed investigations are made for an aluminum host plate modified by artificial structural discontinuities, i.e., surface-bonded steel sheets. The numerical simulations are performed to predict WDICs and study sensitivities using a sophisticated finite element model. The experimental setup uses piezoelectric transducers to excite guided waves in the host plate. A single scanning laser Doppler vibrometer measures the scattered guided waves caused by the surface-bonded steel sheets, and the resulting WDICs with possible influences are investigated. In both cases, the orientation and thickness of the attached steel sheets were varied to create 12 different damage scenarios. In general, the comparison between numerical and experimental WDICs show good agreement. This underpins the applicability of the general methodology for simulating and measuring WDICs over all scenarios. Furthermore, the WDIC scattering patterns reveal a clear dependency of the peaks in the back-scattered reflections for both the numerical and experimental amplitude coefficients on the damage orientation, basically following the law of reflection. However, some discrepancies between both studies were observed. Numerical sensitivity analysis identified the adhesive layer as one reason for such differences. Additionally, misalignment errors in the experimental measurements were also found to affect WDICs. Therefore, an improved baseline subtraction method is proposed, which clearly enhances the experimental WDICs. Finally, an experimental sensitivity study of WDICs for selected sensing radii revealed only a minor influence. All these investigations were made for the amplitude as well as the phase representation of WDICs. Thus, these findings may open the way to future research and development of techniques employing WDICs for advanced applications of non-destructive evaluation and structural health monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subwavelength defect imaging using guided waves has been known to be a difficult task mainly due to the diffraction limit and dispersion of guided waves. In this article, we present a noncontact super-resolution guided wave array imaging approach based on deep learning to visualize subwavelength defects in plate-like structures. The proposed approach is a novel hierarchical multiscale imaging approach that combines two distinct fully convolutional networks. The first fully convolutional network, the global detection network, globally detects subwavelength defects in a raw low-resolution guided wave beamforming image. Then, the subsequent second fully convolutional network, the local super-resolution network, locally resolves subwavelength-scale fine structural details of the detected defects. We conduct a series of numerical simulations and laboratory-scale experiments using a noncontact guided wave array enabled by a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer on aluminate plates with various subwavelength defects. The results demonstrate that the proposed super-resolution guided wave array imaging approach not only locates subwavelength defects but also visualizes super-resolution fine structural details of these defects, thus enabling further estimation of the size and shape of the detected subwavelength defects. We discuss several key aspects of the performance of our approach, compare with an existing super-resolution algorithm, and make recommendations for its successful implementations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insomnia affects millions of people worldwide, and non-pharmacological treatment options are limited. A bed excited with multiple vibration sources was used to explore beat frequency vibration (BFV) as a non-pharmacological treatment for insomnia. A repeated measures design pilot study of 14 participants with mild-moderate insomnia symptom severity (self-reported on the Insomnia Severity Index) was conducted to determine the effects of BFV, and traditional standing wave vibration (SWV) on sleep latency and sleep electrocortical activity. Participants were monitored using high-density electroencephalography (HD-EEG). Sleep latency was compared between treatment conditions. A trend of decreasing sleep latency due to BFV was found for unequivocal sleep latency (p ≤ 0.068). Neural complexity during wake, N1, and N2 stages were compared using Multi-Scale Sample Entropy (MSE), which demonstrated significantly lower MSE between wake and N2 stages (p ≤ 0.002). During N2 sleep, BFV showed lower MSE than the control session in the left frontoparietal region. As a measure of information integration, reduced entropy may indicate that BFV decreases conscious awareness during deeper stages of sleep. SWV caused reduced alpha activity and increased delta activity during wake. BFV caused increased delta activity during N2 sleep. These preliminary results suggest that BFV may help decrease sleep latency, reduce conscious awareness, and increase sleep drive expression during deeper stages of sleep. SWV may be beneficial for decreasing expression of arousal and increasing expression of sleep drive during wake, implying that beat frequency vibration may be beneficial to sleep. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interdigital transducer–based scanning laser Doppler vibrometer has recently been introduced to efficiently generate the symmetric mode for damage detection of shallow defects in thick plates. To measure shallow defects in a carbon steel plate, the excitation frequency is optimized based on the analysis of wavenumber sensitivity and degree of separation between modes. Even though the interdigital transducer–based scanning laser Doppler vibrometer method using continuous excitation is a promising method for visualizing defects in plate-like structures, the interdigital transducer has to be coupled to media, such as oil or water, to minimize the variation in acoustic impedance between the lead zirconium titanate and the plate-like structures. In this study, we develop a dry-coupled interdigital transducer–based scanning laser Doppler vibrometer system for the detection of shallow defects in a plate to facilitate easy mounting and demounting from the plate. To verify the proposed dry-coupled interdigital transducer–based scanning laser Doppler vibrometer, plates with four and eight different depth defects are introduced, and it is demonstrated that the defects in thick plates measured by dry-coupled interdigital transducer–based scanning laser Doppler vibrometer are visualized compared to those measured by interdigital transducer–based scanning laser Doppler vibrometer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: This work presents In-plane Heatwave Thermography as a new in-service qualification method of fasteners in aircraft fuselage panels. By performing feasibility tests on a serviceable part of an aircraft, the results of this work aim towards the application in an industrial environment like the aircraft hangar. A benchmark and comparison with Ultrasound Lock-in Thermography and Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometry ranks this technology with respect to industrial applications. The inspection of fasteners in aluminium joints in the aviation industry is a time consuming and costly but mandatory task. Until today, the manual procedure with the bare eye does not allow the temporal tracking of a damaging behavior or the objective comparison between different inspections. A digital inspection method addresses both aspects while resulting in a significant inspection time reduction. The purpose of this work is to develop a digital and automated inspection method based on In-plane Heatwave Thermography and the analysis of the disturbances due to thermal irregularities in the plate-like structure. For this, a comparison study with Ultrasound Lock-in Thermography and Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometry as well as a benchmarking of all three methods on one serviceable aircraft fuselage panel is performed. The presented data confirm the feasibility to detect and to qualify countersunk rivets and screws in aluminium aircraft fuselage panels with the discussed methods. The results suggest a fully automated inspection procedure which combines the different approaches and a study with more samples to establish thresholds indicating intact and damaged fasteners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The full wavefield detection method based on guided waves can efficiently detect and locate damages relying on the collection of large amounts of wavefield data. The acquisition process by scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) is generally time-consuming, which is limited by Nyquist sampling theorem. To reduce the acquisition time, full wavefield data can be reconstructed from a small number of random sampling point signals combining with compressed sensing. However, the random sampling point signals need to be obtained by adding additional components to the SLDV system or offline processing. Because the random sparse sampling is difficult to achieve via the SLDV system, a new uniform sparse sampling strategy is proposed in this paper. By using the uniform sparse sampling coordinates instead of the random spatial sampling point coordinates, sparse sampling can be applied to SLDV without adding additional components or offline processing. The simulation and experimental results show that the proposed strategy can reduce the measurement locations required for accurate signal recovery to less than 90% of the Nyquist sampling grid, and the damage location error is within the minimum half wavelength. Compared with the conventional jittered sampling strategy, the proposed sampling strategy can directly reduce the sampling time of the SLDV system by more than 90% without adding additional components and achieve the same accuracy of guided wavefield reconstruction and damage location as the jittered sampling strategy. The research results can greatly improve the efficiency of damage detection technology based on wavefield analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inspection of fasteners in aluminium joints in the aviation industry is a time consuming and costly but mandatory task. Until today, the manual procedure with the bare eye does not allow the temporal tracking of a damaging behavior or the objective comparison between different inspections. A digital inspection method addresses both aspects while resulting in a significant inspection time reduction. The purpose of this work is to develop a digital and automated inspection method based on In-plane Heatwave Thermography and the analysis of the disturbances due to thermal irregularities in the plate-like structure. For this, a comparison study with Ultrasound Lock-in Thermography and Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometry as well as a benchmarking of all three methods on one serviceable aircraft fuselage panel is performed. The presented data confirm the feasibility to detect and to qualify countersunk rivets and screws in aluminium aircraft fuselage panels with the discussed methods. The results suggest a fully automated inspection procedure which combines the different approaches and a study with more samples to establish thresholds indicating intact and damaged fasteners.

The analysis of acoustic wave fields is important for a large number of engineering designs, communication and health-related reasons. The visualization of wavefronts gives valuable information about the type of transducers and excitation signals more suitable for the test itself. This article is dedicated to the development of a fast procedure for acoustic fields visualization in underwater conditions, by means of laser Doppler vibrometer measurements. The ultrasonic probe is a focused transducer excited by a chirp signal. The scope of this work is to evaluate experimentally the properties of the sound beam in order to get reliable information about the transducer itself to be used in many kinds of engineering tests and transducer design.

The conductive hearing loss caused by acute otitis media (AOM) is commonly related to a reduction of the tympanic membrane (TM) mobility in response to sound stimuli. However, spatial alterations of the TM surface motion associated with AOM have rarely been addressed. In this study, the TM surface motion was determined using scanning laser Doppler vibrometry (SLDV) in a chinchilla model of AOM. The AOM was established by transbullar injection of nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae. The TM surface vibration was measured in control (uninfected) animals and two AOM groups of animals: 4 days (4D) and 8 days (8D) post inoculation. To quantify the effect of middle ear pressure in those infected ears, the SLDV measurement was first conducted in unopened AOM ears and then in middle ear pressure released ears. Results showed that middle ear infection generally reduced the TM displacement across the entire surface, but the reduction in the umbo displacement over the time course, from 4 to 8 days post inoculation, was less than the reduction in the displacement at the center of each quadrant. The presence of middle ear fluid shifted the occurrence of traveling-wave-like motion on the TM surface to lower frequencies. The observation of the spatial variations of TM surface motion from this study will help refine our understanding of the middle ear sound transmission characteristics in relation to AOM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quest for large and low-frequency band gaps is one of the principal objectives pursued in a number of engineering applications, ranging from noise absorption to vibration control, and to seismic wave abatement. For this purpose, a plethora of complex architectures (including multiphase materials) and multiphysics approaches have been proposed in the past, often involving difficulties in their practical realization. To address the issue of proposing a material design that enables large band gaps using a simple configuration, in this study we propose an easy-to-manufacture design able to open large, low-frequency complete Lamb band gaps exploiting a suitable arrangement of masses and stiffnesses produced by cavities in a monolithic material. The performance of the designed structure is evaluated by numerical simulations and confirmed by scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) measurements on an isotropic polyvinyl chloride plate in which a square ring region of cross-like cavities is fabricated. The full wave field reconstruction clearly confirms the ability of even a limited number of unit cell rows of the proposed design to efficiently attenuate Lamb waves. In addition, numerical simulations show that the structure allows to shift the central frequency of the BG through geometrical modifications. The design may be of interest for applications in which large BGs at low frequencies are required.

Vibration-based nondestructive testing is an area of growing interest and worthy of exploring new and innovative approaches. The displacement mode shape is often chosen to identify damage due to its local detailed characteristic and less sensitivity to surrounding noise. Requirement for baseline mode shape in most vibration-based damage identification limits application of such a strategy. In this study, a new surface fractal dimension called edge perimeter dimension (EPD) is formulated, from which an EPD-based window dimension locus (EPD-WDL) algorithm for irregularity or damage identification of plate-type structures is established. An analytical notch-type damage model of simply-supported plates is proposed to evaluate notch effect on plate vibration performance; while a sub-domain of notch cases with less effect is selected to investigate robustness of the proposed damage identification algorithm. Then, fundamental aspects of EPD-WDL algorithm in term of notch localization, notch quantification, and noise immunity are assessed. A mathematical solution called isomorphism is implemented to remove false peaks caused by inflexions of mode shapes when applying the EPD-WDL algorithm to higher mode shapes. The effectiveness and practicability of the EPD-WDL algorithm are demonstrated by an experimental procedure on damage identification of an artificially-induced notched aluminum cantilever plate using a measurement system of piezoelectric lead-zirconate (PZT) actuator and scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV). As demonstrated in both the analytical and experimental evaluations, the new surface fractal dimension technique developed is capable of effectively identifying damage in plate-type structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new fully automated scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) measurement technique is presented. In contrast to existing scanning LDV techniques which use a 2D camera for the manual selection of sample points, we use a 3D Time-of-Flight camera in combination with a CAD file of the test object to automatically obtain measurements at pre-defined locations. The proposed procedure allows users to test prototypes in a shorter time because physical measurement locations are determined without user interaction. Another benefit from this methodology is that it incorporates automatic mapping between a CAD model and the vibration measurements. This mapping can be used to visualize measurements directly on a 3D CAD model. The proposed method is illustrated with vibration measurements of an unmanned aerial vehicle [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, galvanometric scanning systems (like the one used in a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer) rely on a planar calibration procedure between a two-dimensional (2D) camera and the laser galvanometric scanning system to automatically aim a laser beam at a particular point on an object. In the case of nonplanar or moving objects, this calibration is not sufficiently accurate anymore. In this work, a three-dimensional (3D) calibration procedure that uses a 3D range sensor is proposed. The 3D calibration is valid for all types of objects and retains its accuracy when objects are moved between subsequent measurement campaigns. The proposed 3D calibration uses a Non-Perspective-n-Point (NPnP) problem solution. The 3D range sensor is used to calculate the position of the object under test relative to the laser galvanometric system. With this extrinsic calibration, the laser galvanometric scanning system can automatically aim a laser beam to this object. In experiments, the mean accuracy of aiming the laser beam on an object is below 10 mm for 95% of the measurements. This achieved accuracy is mainly determined by the accuracy and resolution of the 3D range sensor. The new calibration method is significantly better than the original 2D calibration method, which in our setup achieves errors below 68 mm for 95% of the measurements.

This paper presents a method of measuring the vibration patterns onfacial surfaces by using a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer(LDV). The surfaces of the face, neck, and body vibrate duringphonation and, according to Titze (2001), these vibrations occur whenaerodynamic energy is efficiently converted into acoustic energy atthe glottis. A vocalist's vibration velocity patterns may thereforeindicate his or her phonatory status or singing skills. LDVs enablelaser-based non-contact measurement of the vibration velocity anddisplacement of a certain point on a vibrating object, and scanningLDVs permit multipoint measurements. The benefits of scanning LDVsoriginate from the facts that they do not affect the vibrations ofmeasured objects and that they can rapidly measure the vibrationpatterns across planes. A case study is presented herein todemonstrate the method of measuring vibration velocity patterns with ascanning LDV. The objective of the experiment was to measure thevibration velocity differences between the modal and falsettoregisters while three professional soprano singers sang sustainedvowels at four pitch frequencies. The results suggest that there is apossibility that pitch frequency are correlated with vibrationvelocity. However, further investigations are necessary to clarify therelationships between vibration velocity patterns and phonation statusand singing skills.

A scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV) has been widely used in non-contact vibration measurement. This paper presents a novel investigation of three-dimensional (3D) vibration measurement by a single SLDV sequentially placed at three different positions, where 3D vibration is defined as three vibration components along axes of a specified measurement coordinate system (MCS), which can give more precise knowledge of structural dynamic characteristics. A geometric model of the SLDV is proposed and a vibrometer coordinate system (VCS) based on the geometric model is defined and fixed on the SLDV. The pose of a SLDV with respect to a MCS is expressed in the form of a translation vector and a direction cosine matrix from the VCS to the MCS, which can be calculated by four or more target points with known coordinates in both the MCS and the VCS. An improved method based on the least squares method and singular value decomposition is proposed to obtain the pose of the SLDV. Compared with an inverse method, the proposed method can yield an orthogonal direction cosine matrix and be applicable to a two-dimensional structure. Effects of the number of target points on the accuracy and stability of the proposed method are investigated. With three direction cosine matrices of three different positions obtained by the proposed method, measured vibration velocities along laser line-of-sight directions can be transformed to vibration components along axes of the MCS. An experiment was conducted to measure 3D vibration of a target point on a beam under sinusoidal excitation by a single SLDV sequentially placed at three different positions. Vibration components along axes of the MCS obtained by the single SLDV were in good agreement with those from a commercial Polytec 3D scanning laser vibrometer PSV-500-3D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometer is one of the technologies in non-contact measurement that is capable of measuring deflection of structure. This project isto determine stress on plate structure due to vibration with free boundary conditions by using non-contact out-of-plane single head scanning laser doppler vibrometer measurement. The first vibration mode frequency is used to vibrate the plate meanwhile the single head scanning laser vibrometer is used to measure out-of-plane deflection of the plate surface. The measured deflection values are then used to calculate stresses at the plate surface by using the relation of stress with bending formation. Furthermore, direct strain values of the plate have been measured at certain bending formation that corresponded to the bending formation due to the first vibration mode excitation. This experiment method shows that the stress determination by using out-of-plane deflection is possible by using single head scanning laser doppler vibrometer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of acoustic wave fields is important for a large number of engineering designs, communication and health-related reasons. The visualization of wavefronts gives valuable information about the type of transducers and excitation signals more suitable for the test itself. This article is dedicated to the development of a fast procedure for acoustic fields visualization in underwater conditions, by means of laser Doppler vibrometer measurements. The ultrasonic probe is a focused transducer excited by a chirp signal. The scope of this work is to evaluate experimentally the properties of the sound beam in order to get reliable information about the transducer itself to be used in many kinds of engineering tests and transducer design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vibration of the tympanic membrane (TM) has been measured at the umbo using laser Doppler vibrometry and analyzed with finite element (FE) models of the human ear. Recently, full-field TM surface motion has been reported using scanning laser Doppler vibrometry, holographic interferometry, and optical coherence tomography. Technologies for imaging human TM motion have the potential to lead to using a dedicated clinical diagnosis tool for identification of middle ear diseases. However, the effect of middle ear fluid (liquid) on TM surface motion is still not clear. In this study, a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer was used to measure the full-field surface motion of the TM from four human temporal bones. TM displacements were measured under normal and disease-mimicking conditions with different middle ear liquid levels over frequencies ranging from 0.2 to 8 kHz. An FE model of the human ear, including the ear canal, middle ear, and spiral cochlea was used to simulate the motion of the TM in normal and disease-mimicking conditions. The results from both experiments and FE model show that a simple deflection shape with one or two major displacement peak regions of the TM in normal ear was observed at low frequencies (1 kHz and below) while complicated ring-like pattern of the deflection shapes appeared at higher frequencies (4 kHz and above). The liquid in middle ear mainly affected TM deflection shapes at the frequencies higher than 1 kHz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feathers can produce sound by fluttering in airflow. This flutter is hypothesized to be aeroelastic, arising from the coupling of aerodynamic forces to one or more of the feather's intrinsic structural resonance frequencies. We investigated how mode of flutter varied among a sample of hummingbird tail feathers tested in a wind tunnel. Feather vibration was measured directly at ~100 points across the surface of the feather with a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV), as a function of airspeed, Uair. Most feathers exhibited multiple discrete modes of flutter, which we classified into types including tip, trailing vane and torsional modes. Vibratory behavior within a given mode was usually stable, but changes in independent variables such as airspeed or orientation sometimes caused feathers to abruptly 'jump' from one mode to another. We measured structural resonance frequencies and mode shapes directly by measuring the free response of 64 feathers stimulated with a shaker and recorded with the SLDV. As predicted by the aeroelastic flutter hypothesis, the mode shape (spatial distribution) of flutter corresponded to a bending or torsional structural resonance frequency of the feather. However, the match between structural resonance mode and flutter mode was better for tip or torsional mode shapes, and poorer for trailing vane modes. Often, the 3rd bending structural harmonic matched the expressed mode of flutter, rather than the fundamental. We conclude that flutter occurs when airflow excites one or more structural resonance frequencies of a feather, most akin to a vibrating violin string. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of the modal parameters of bridges and other large civil constructions has become an important research issue. Different approaches have been proposed depending on the excitation used: ambient excitations (due to wind, traffic, ..) or artificial excitations (e.g. impact test with heavy drop weights). In practice it turns out that not all modes are well excited by the ambient forces. Hence the application of an artificial actuator is advisable. The problem is that larger constructions often require large and heavy excitation devices, which are hard to manipulate. Another difficulty encountered in performing a modal analysis on large civil constructions is the necessity for a large number of high sensitivity sensors. Consequently a large number of cables has to be installed resulting in a large setup time. This paper is a proof-of-concept which demonstrates the possibility of using lightweight Pneumatic Artificial Muscles combined with the scanning laser Doppler vibrometer to perform a modal analysis on a civil structure. This combination allows for an important reduction in setup time and allows for sine testing as well as the application of broadband signals such as periodic chirps, true noise or multisines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Registration, also known as pose estimation and position registration, is an essential part of the accurate quantitative analysis of velocity data obtained with a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV). This paper presents a hybrid method of registration using a general linear laser model. The general linear laser model uses sets of slopes and intercepts rather than nonlinear functions of mirror angles to describe the spatial path of the laser beam. This simplifies registration mathematics and also allows the hybrid registration algorithm to be applied to any type of SLDV using any length unit system. The hybrid registration algorithm is comparable in accuracy to existing methods, but eliminates the need for laser rangefinders and the generation of high quality starting points in optimization. This is accomplished by using a very stable optimization based on distance between point pairs to generate a large number of potential solutions from random starting guesses, and then selecting the correct solution by means of a secondary error descriptor. Simulated and experimental validation is presented to support the effectiveness of this algorithm. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study explores the feasibility of using a non-contact guided wave imaging system to detect hidden delamination in multi-layer composites. The study is conducted in two phases. In the first phase, Lamb waves are excited by a lead (Pb) Zirconate Titanate transducer (PZT) mounted on the surface of a composite plate, and the out-of-plane velocity field is measured using a one-dimensional (1D) scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV). From the scanned time signals, wavefield images are constructed and processed to study the interaction of Lamb waves with delamination. The paper presents additional signal and image processing techniques used to highlight the defect in the scanned area. The techniques are demonstrated using experimental data collected from a 1.8mm thick multi-layer composite. In the second phase, a completely non-contact system is described to excite and measure guided waves. A modulated continuous wave (CW) laser source in conjunction with a photodiode is used to wirelessly excite an attached PZT and the resulting waves are again sensed using the vibrometer. The non-contact system is used to excite and measure elastic waves in a composite channel test article. The elastic wave propagation image sequences are created from the non-contact excitation system. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Operating Deflection Shapes (ODS) has emerged as one of the powerful techniques in vibration analysis to understand and to evaluate the absolute dynamic behaviour of a machine, component or an entire structure. Traditionally, accelerometers have been used to get the ODS of a structure. However, recent development shows that certain situation may not allow direct contact with the structure under investigation. Therefore, Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometer (SLDV) has become popular in the investigation. In this paper, a new ODS Frequency Response Function (ODS FRF) for investigations using SLDV is formulated. The ODS FRF is used to construct the ODS of the structure. A new form of scale factor for the ODS FRF is also introduced to normalize the effects from variable excitation force. The importance of this scale factor is demonstrated on a beam and plate under the excitation of varying forces. It is found that the suggested ODS FRF and the scale factor give the desired result in comparison with theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The paper presents measurement procedures for the evaluation of velocity/displacement components of surface elastic waves through a single beam Laser Vibrometer. The developed technique is applied for the estimation of Rayleigh wave polarization in aluminum specimens. The estimated polarization orbits are compared with the analytical ones to demonstrate the effectiveness of the measurement technique. The estimations rely on the preliminary analysis of the recorded signals in the frequency/wavenumber domain, as enabled by the fine spatial resolution provided by a scanning Laser vibrometer, which allows identification and separation of Rayleigh waves from the recorded wavefield. In addition, comparison of polarization measurements performed on untreated and shot-peened samples suggests the measurement technique as a tool for the estimation of the effect of residual stresses on the polarization properties of surface waves. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]