A Pitch-Catch Based Online Structural Health Monitoring of Pressure Vessels, Considering Corrosion Formation

Structural health monitoring is a developing research field which is multifunctional and can estimate the health condition of the structure by data analyzing and also can prognosticate the structural damages. Illuminating the damages by using piezoelectric sensors is one of the most effective techniques in structural health monitoring. Pressurized equipments are very important components in process industries such as oil, gas, petrochemical and power plants, that their health monitoring is vital. The aim of this research is to introduce a technique to illuminate the damages in these equipments by using guided waves. Thereby, two different specimens were used as pressurized vessels at different conditions: pristine and corroded. Different internal pressures were also studied. Piezoelectric transducers were electromechanically coupled to the vessels and the guided waves were propagated by using pitch-catch method. The outcomes indicated that damage parameters in vessels such as corrosion and pressure changes have considerable effect on the signals that piezoelectric sensors receive. Corrosion, the most common damage in pressurized vessels, reduce the signal domain in frequency field to 11%. Also increasing pressure reduce the signal domain.
We can used these outcomes to innovate a technique for structural health monitoring of pressure equipmentss.