Metal structures can fail because of fatigue crack propagation or because of section loss from corrosion. Regular inspection is required to detect such failures. We report here progress toward the development of MEMS-based transducers for ultrasonic flaw detection, to be permanently mounted at critical locations on structures. In a complete system, a single piezoelectric element will be used to...

Phased arrays are now widely used in ultrasonic non destructive testing, as they provide improved versatility with comparison to conventional monolithic probes. Apart from the intrinsic abilities to steer and to focus the beam through planar, curved or irregular profiles, specific phased arrays acquisition schemes can also be applied. Electronic commutation (a group of elements over a large arr...

to establish the location and shape of a Iiquid/vapor interface in a liquid container, thus enabling liquid A demonstration system for the ultrasonic gauging of volume measurement [I,21. fluids in low-gravity has been designed and tested. For purposes of simplification, it was assumed that vapor Typically, in propellant storage applications, the liquid within a liquid container in low-gravity w...

In this paper an oil-water de-emulsification process within large tanks using ultrasonic technology is presented. As the device would operate in hazardous areas, it should not consume an excessive amount of electrical power. Hence, the paper investigates the suitable oil-water concentrations (10-90% concentrations in step of 10%) which would lead to the fastest separation while consuming the mi...

Double-side replication of polymer substrates is beneficial to the design and the fabrication of 3-demensional devices. The ultrasonic embossing method is a promising, high efficiency and low cost replication method for thermoplastic substrates. It is convenient to apply silicon molds in ultrasonic embossing, because microstructures can be easily fabricated on silicon wafers with etching techni...

Most frequently applied ultrasonic inspection techniques measure the reflectivity of geometric scatterers that are caused by impurities, flaws and defects in the material. Based on the echo sounder principles, the reflector has to be insonified by directed sound pulses. This requires a large number of transducers with different incident angles and sound field patterns, which are more and more r...