Online nonlinear ultrasound imaging of crack closure during thermal fatigue loading

A thermal fatigue surface crack (6 mm deep x 23 mm wide) in a thick austenitic stainless steel plate is opened and closed with thermal heating and cooling cycles. This closing and opening of the crack is recorded with using fundamental wave amplitude difference (FAD) technique with 5 MHz 64 element phased array probe. In addition, the contact pressure and crack opening state at different time intervals were estimated using finite element (FE) simulation. In combination with the nonlinear output from the FAD and FE simulation gave insight at which level the contact pressure or the distance between crack faces prevents the contact acoustic nonlinearity (CAN) from happening. Predictably, no clear nonlinear response was recorded at crack face locations experiencing high contact pressure and on the locations where the crack could be considered fully open, as predicted by the FE simulation. Therefore, the FAD technique can be utilized within the constraints quantified in the paper.