Detection method of fatigue damage in carbon steel using laser ultrasonics

Abstract

Ultrasonic attenuation was measured by the laser ultrasonic technique among the carbon steel specimens which were subjected to five stages of fatigue damage by constant cyclic tensile stress amplitude. Irradiation of a Q-switched laser was used for ultrasonic generation, and a laser interferometer which consists of a frequency-doubled continuous wave laser and a Fabry-Perot etalon was used for detection of ultrasonic vibration on the specimen surface. From the comparison of the broadband ultrasonic waveforms among five stages of fatigue damage, the attenuation coefficient of the longitudinal wave by the intrinsic material attenuation increased progressively with increasing the number of fatigue cycle. Ultrasonic attenuation at 2.5, 5.0, 7.5 and 10.0 MHz were also calculated by Fourier transformation in order to compare the decay of the longitudinal wave among these frequency components. From the results, ultrasonic attenuation increased as the number of fatigue cycle increased, in both broadband and narrowband frequency components. Therefore, the measurement of broadband and narrowband ultrasonic wave obtained by the laser ultrasonic technique would be effective as the detection method of fatigue damage in nuclear power plant components.