Characterisation of polymer material using I-Kaz™ analysis method under impact hammer excitation technique

Abstract

During the design and engineering applications, the characteristics of the material are regarded as one of the most significant aspects of the process. This is to prevent any component or structure failure. This study employs the implementation of a newly devised method for characterising the property of a material based on the non-destructive testing concept which uses vibrational signals. Experimental procedure was carried out by elastically triggering a specimen using an impact hammer following ASTM C 1259-01 standard within the specific range of impact force. The polymer material specimen tested were of four types: Polycarbonate (PC), Polyoxymethylene (POM), Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and Cast nylon (MC). Data obtained involved three forms of signals which are vibrational signals recorded by accelerometer sensor, the vibration signal recorded by piezofilm sensor and the impact force signal using the impact hammer. An alternative statistical analysis of Integrated Kurtosis-Based Algorithm for Z-Filter (I-kaz™) method was used to analyse and interpret the time domain of vibrational signal obtained from the experiment. The results are two correlation processes between the material properties (Bulk modulus and hardness-Vickers) and the I-kaz™, Z8 coefficients of vibration signal that are recorded by the piezofilm sensor and accelerometer sensor. The findings prove that there is a relationship between the I-kaz™ coefficients of vibration signal and the properties of certain materials based on statistical analysis approach used in this study.