Reliability improvement of nonlinear ultrasonic modulation based fatigue crack detection using feature-level data fusion

In this study, the reliability of nonlinear ultrasonic modulation based fatigue crack detection is improved using a feature-level data fusion approach. When two ultrasonic inputs at two distinct frequencies are applied to a specimen with a fatigue crack, modulation components at the summation and difference of these two input frequencies appear. First, the spectral amplitudes of the modulation components and their spectral correlations are defined as individual features. Then, a 2D feature space is constructed by combining these two features, and the presence of a fatigue crack is identified in the feature space. The effectiveness of the proposed fatigue crack detection technique is experimentally validated through cyclic loading tests of aluminum plates, full-scale steel girders and a rotating shaft component. Subsequently, the improved reliability of the proposed technique is quantitatively investigated using receiver operating characteristic analysis. The uniqueness of this study lies in (1) improvement of nonlinear ultrasonic modulation based fatigue crack detection reliability using feature-level data fusion, (2) reference-free fatigue crack diagnosis without using the baseline data obtained from the intact condition of the structure, (3) application to full-scale steel girders and shaft component, and (4) quantitative investigation of the improved reliability using receiver operating characteristic analysis.