Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “passive acoustic”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 91 records · Page 5

Preliminary analysis of the JAPE ground vehicle test data with an artificial neural network classifier

Remotely sensing and classifying military vehicles in a battlefield environment have been the source of much research over the past 20 years. The ability to know where threat vehicles are located is an obvious advantage to military personnel. In the past active methods of ground vehicle detection such as radar have been used, but with the advancement of technology to locate these active sensors, passive sensors are preferred. Passive sensors detect acoustic emissions, seismic movement, electromagnetic radiation, etc., produced by the target and use this information to describe it. Deriving the mathematical models to classify vehicles in this manner has been, and is, quite complex and not always reliable. However, with the resurgence of artificial neural network (ANN) research in the past few years, developing models for this work may be a thing of the past. Preliminary results from an ANN analysis to the tank signatures recorded at the Joint Acoustic Propagation Experiment (JAPE) at the US Army White Sands Missile Range, NM, in July 1991, are presented.

Larsen, Nathan F.↗

Large Area Nondestructive Evaluation of a Fatigue Loaded Composite Structure

Large area nondestructive evaluation (NDE) inspections are required for fatigue testing of composite structures to track damage initiation and growth. Of particular interest is the progression of damage leading to ultimate failure to validate damage progression models. In this work, passive thermography and acoustic emission NDE were used to track damage growth up to failure of a composite three-stringer panel. Fourteen acoustic emission sensors were placed on the composite panel. The signals from the array were acquired simultaneously and allowed for acoustic emission location. In addition, real time thermal data of the composite structure were acquired during loading. Details are presented on the mapping of the acoustic emission locations directly onto the thermal imagery to confirm areas of damage growth leading to ultimate failure. This required synchronizing the acoustic emission and thermal data with the applied loading. In addition, processing of the thermal imagery which included contrast enhancement, removal of optical barrel distortion and correction of angular rotation before mapping the acoustic event locations are discussed.

Joseph N Zalameda↗

Detecting thermal crack growth on a large additive manufactured structure using acoustic emission

Large format additive manufacturing (LFAM) proved to have a great potential to become an adjacent technology to traditional manufacturing methods. One of the sectors LFAM is targeting is rapid tool/mold development for composites. This includes large mold structures used for high-temperature molding techniques (in-oven or autoclave). Although, these large printed structures (reaching hundreds of pounds) develop thermal-residual stress during cool-down and can eventually crack, turning the structure into waste. Acoustic emission (AE), a passive non-intrusive global nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technique, was used to monitor crack growth and can provide the right tools that can be used for feedback loop for corrective action. This research performs thermal testing on a large AM mold with preexisting cracks, in an attempt to monitor crack growth using AE. AE was able to detect, identify and locate the crack source by means of acoustic features, waveform characteristics, spectrum analysis, and difference in arrival times.

Spencer, Ryan↗

Development of an Experimental Rig for Investigation of Higher Order Modes in Ducts

Continued progress to reduce fan noise emission from high bypass ratio engine ducts in aircraft increasingly relies on accurate description of the sound propagation in the duct. A project has been undertaken at NASA Langley Research Center to investigate the propagation of higher order modes in ducts with flow. This is a two-pronged approach, including development of analytic models (the subject of a separate paper) and installation of a laboratory-quality test rig. The purposes of the rig are to validate the analytical models and to evaluate novel duct acoustic liner concepts, both passive and active. The dimensions of the experimental rig test section scale to between 25% and 50% of the aft bypass ducts of most modern engines. The duct is of rectangular cross section so as to provide flexibility to design and fabricate test duct liner samples. The test section can accommodate flow paths that are straight through or offset from inlet to discharge, the latter design allowing investigation of the effect of curvature on sound propagation and duct liner performance. The maximum air flow rate through the duct is Mach 0.3. Sound in the duct is generated by an array of 16 high-intensity acoustic drivers. The signals to the loudspeaker array are generated by a multi-input/multi-output feedforward control system that has been developed for this project. The sound is sampled by arrays of flush-mounted microphones and a modal decomposition is performed at the frequency of sound generation. The data acquisition system consists of two arrays of flush-mounted microphones, one upstream of the test section and one downstream. The data are used to determine parameters such as the overall insertion loss of the test section treatment as well as the effect of the treatment on a modal basis such as mode scattering. The methodology used for modal decomposition is described, as is a description of the mode generation control system. Data are presented which demonstrate the performance of the controller to generate the desired mode while suppressing all other cut on modes in the duct.

Gerhold, Carl H.↗

Online Monitoring System for Concrete Structures Affected by Alkali-Silica Reaction

This report presents a comprehensive study of developing ultrasonic wave and acoustic emission (AE) techniques for long-term monitoring of alkali-silica reaction (ASR) development in concrete. Small, medium, and full-scale concrete specimens were cast, conditioned, and monitored for various periods, from at least one year to 2.4 years. The reactive concrete specimens contain coarse or fine reactive aggregates to study the effects of different types of reactive aggregates. Confinements were also designed to simulate the 2-dimensional confinement effects of reinforcement in the shield building of nuclear power plants. The concrete specimens were stored in a environmental chamber with high humidity and high temperature to accelerate the ASR development. The ultrasonic monitoring data shows high sensitivity to ASR development and could detect cracking initiation well before visible surface cracks occurred. However, the linear ultrasonic analysis based on wave velocity is strongly affected by temperature variation. Therefore, a nonlinear ultrasonic method was proposed to measure thermally induced nonlinear acoustic responses of concrete (thermal modulation of ultrasonic wave). The measured nonlinear acoustic parameter shows a high correlation with ASR expansion across specimens with different reactive aggregates and confinement conditions. The same conclusion was obtained from nonlinear resonance tests on small concrete prisms. Compared to the linear acoustic methods, the nonlinear tests show high sensitivities to ASR damage from internal microcracking initiation at the early stage to visible cracks at the late stage of ASR. The attributes of the thermal modulation of nonlinear ultrasonic method include high sensitivity, immunity to temperature effects, and strong correlation with ASR expansion, which demonstrate great potentials of the nonlinear ultrasonic method for diagnosis of ASR damage and prediction of concrete deterioration process. Acoustic emission is a passive sensing technique for damage assessment, and access to only one surface is needed even for thick and heavily reinforced elements such as the walls utilized for nuclear shield building. Additionally, relatively few sensors are required to monitor the progression of the damage process. Results indicate that the AE data can be related to the damage rating index, which is a petrography-based means of assessing damage due to ASR in reinforced concrete. Furthermore, AE is capable of detecting ASR damage long before surface cracking is visually noticeable. Boundary conditions play in important role in the progression of ASR damage and differences in boundary conditions are reflected in the AE data. Entropy based data assessment methods provide a means to assess the damage state, and convolutional neural network based data assessment provided a means to assess the damage state in real-time. Results indicate that artificial neural network models may be used as a means to predict volumetric expansion based on AE data.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Classification of animal sounds in a hyperdiverse rainforest using convolutional neural networks with data augmentation

To protect tropical forest biodiversity, we need to be able to detect it reliably, cheaply, and at scale. Automated detection of sound producing animals from passively recorded soundscapes via machine-learning approaches is a promising technique towards this goal, but it is constrained by the necessity of large training data sets. Using soundscapes from a tropical forest in Borneo and a Convolutional Neural Network model (CNN), we investigate i) the minimum viable training data set size for accurate prediction of call types (‘sonotypes’), and ii) the extent to which data augmentation and transfer learning can overcome the issue of small and imbalanced training data sets. We found that even relatively high sample sizes (>80 per sonotype) lead to mediocre accuracy, which however improved significantly with data augmentation and transfer learning, including at extremely small sample sizes (3 per sonotype), regardless of taxonomic group or call characteristics. Neither transfer learning nor data augmentation alone achieved high accuracy. Our results suggest that transfer learning and data augmentation could make the use of CNNs to classify species’ vocalizations feasible even for small soundscape-based projects with many rare species. Retraining our open-source model requires only basic programming skills which makes it possible for individual conservation initiatives to match their local context, in order to enable more evidence-informed management of biodiversity.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Deep learning with mixup augmentation for improved pore detection during additive manufacturing

In additive manufacturing (AM), process defects such as keyhole pores are difficult to anticipate, affecting the quality and integrity of the AM-produced materials. Hence, considerable efforts have aimed to predict these process defects by training machine learning (ML) models using passive measurements such as acoustic emissions. This work considered a dataset in which keyhole pores of a laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) experiment were identified using X-ray radiography and then registered both in space and time to acoustic measurements recorded during the LPBF experiment. Due to AM’s intrinsic process controls, where a pore-forming event is relatively rare, the acoustic datasets collected during monitoring include more non-pores than pores. In other words, the dataset for ML model development is imbalanced. Moreover, this imbalanced and sparse data phenomenon remains ubiquitous across many AM monitoring schemes since training data is nontrivial to collect. Hence, we propose a machine learning approach to improve this dataset imbalance and enhance the prediction accuracy of pore-labeled data. Specifically, we investigate how data augmentation helps predict pores and non-pores better. This imbalance is improved using recent advances in data augmentation called Mixup, a weak-supervised learning method. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are trained on original and augmented datasets, and an appreciable increase in performance is reported when testing on five different experimental trials. When ML models are trained on original and augmented datasets, they achieve an accuracy of 95% and 99% on test datasets, respectively. We also provide information on how dataset size affects model performance. Lastly, we investigate the optimal Mixup parameters for augmentation in the context of CNN performance.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Deep learning with mixup augmentation for improved pore detection during additive manufacturing

In additive manufacturing (AM), process defects such as keyhole pores are difficult to anticipate, affecting the quality and integrity of the AM-produced materials. Hence, considerable efforts have aimed to predict these process defects by training machine learning (ML) models using passive measurements such as acoustic emissions. This work considered a dataset in which keyhole pores of a laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) experiment were identified using X-ray radiography and then registered both in space and time to acoustic measurements recorded during the LPBF experiment. Due to AM’s intrinsic process controls, where a pore-forming event is relatively rare, the acoustic datasets collected during monitoring include more non-pores than pores. In other words, the dataset for ML model development is imbalanced. Moreover, this imbalanced and sparse data phenomenon remains ubiquitous across many AM monitoring schemes since training data is nontrivial to collect. Hence, we propose a machine learning approach to improve this dataset imbalance and enhance the prediction accuracy of pore-labeled data. Specifically, we investigate how data augmentation helps predict pores and non-pores better. This imbalance is improved using recent advances in data augmentation called Mixup, a weak-supervised learning method. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are trained on original and augmented datasets, and an appreciable increase in performance is reported when testing on five different experimental trials. When ML models are trained on original and augmented datasets, they achieve an accuracy of 95% and 99% on test datasets, respectively. We also provide information on how dataset size affects model performance. Lastly, we investigate the optimal Mixup parameters for augmentation in the context of CNN performance.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Acoustics at the nanoscale (nanoacoustics): A comprehensive literature review. Part I: Materials, devices and selected applications

We report in the past decade, acoustics at the nanoscale (i.e., nanoacoustics) has evolved rapidly with continuous and substantial expansion of capabilities and refinement of techniques. Motivated by research innovations in the last decade, for the first time, recent advancements of acoustics-associated nanomaterials/nanostructures and nanodevices for different applications are outlined in this comprehensive review, which is written in two parts. As part I of this two-part review, firstly, active and passive nanomaterials and nanostructures for acoustics are presented. Following that, representative applications of nanoacoustics including material property characterization, nanomaterial/nanostructure manipulation, and sensing, are discussed in detail. Finally, a summary is presented with point of views on the current challenges and potential solutions in this burgeoning field.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Active control of acoustic pressure fields using smart material technologies

An overview describing the use of piezoceramic patches in reducing noise in a structural acoustics setting is presented. The passive and active contributions due to patches which are bonded to an Euler-Bernoulli beam or thin shell are briefly discussed and the results are incorporated into a 2-D structural acoustics model. In this model, an exterior noise source causes structural vibrations which in turn lead to interior noise as a result of nonlinear fluid/structure coupling mechanism. Interior sound pressure levels are reduced via patches bonded to the flexible boundary (a beam in this case) which generate pure bending moments when an out-of-phase voltage is applied. Well-posedness results for the infinite dimensional system are discussed and a Galerkin scheme for approximating the system dynamics is outlined. Control is implemented by using linear quadratic regulator (LQR) optimal control theory to calculate gains for the linearized system and then feeding these gains back into the nonlinear system of interest. The effectiveness of this strategy for this problem is illustrated in an example.

Banks, H. T.↗

Achievable Performance and Effective Interrogator Design for SAW RFID Sensor Tags

For many NASA missions, remote sensing is a critical application that supports activities such as environmental monitoring, planetary science, structural shape and health monitoring, non-destructive evaluation, etc. The utility of the remote sensing devices themselves is greatly increased if they are passive V that is, they do not require any on-board power supply such as batteries V and if they can be identified uniquely during the sensor interrogation process. Additional passive sensor characteristics that enable greater utilization in space applications are small size and weight, long read ranges with low interrogator power, ruggedness, and operability in extreme environments (vacuum, extreme high/low temperature, high radiation, etc.) In this paper, we consider one very promising passive sensor technology, called surface acoustic wave (SAW) radio-frequency identification (RFID), that satisfies all of these criteria. In general, RFID is a method of identifying items using radio waves to interrogate tags encoded with a unique identifier that are affixed to the items of interest. In the case of passive tags, only the interrogator, which transmits power to the tags in the form of radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation, requires access to a power supply. Passive RFID technologies are used today in many applications, including asset tracking and management, security and access control, and remote sensing. To date, most of the development and application in RFID technology has focused on either asset/inventory tracking and control or security and access control because these are the largest commercial application areas. Recently however, there has been growing interest in using passive RFID technology for remote sensing applications, and SAW devices are at the forefront of RFID sensing technology development. Although SAW RFID tags have great potential for use in numerous space-based remote sensing applications, the limited collision resolution capability of current generation tags limits the performance in a cluttered sensing environment. That is, as more SAW-based sensors are added to the environment, numerous tag responses are superimposed at the receiver and decoding all or even a subset of the telemetry becomes increasingly difficult. Background clutter generated by reflectors other than the sensors themselves is also a problem, as is multipath interference and signal distortion, but the limiting factor in many remote sensing applications can be expected to be tag mutual interference. This problem may be greatly mitigated by proper design of the SAW tag waveform, but that remains an open research problem, and in the meantime, several other related questions remain to be answered including: (1) What are the fundamental relationships between tag parameters such as bit-rate, time-bandwidth-product, SNR, and achievable collision resolution? (2) What are the differences in optimal or near-optimal interrogator designs between noise-limited environments and interference-limited environments? (3) What are the performance characteristics of different interrogator designs in term of parameters such as transmitter power level, range, and number of interfering tags? In this paper, we will present the results of a research effort aimed at providing at least partial answers to all of these questions.

Barton Richard J.↗

Assessment of Noise Reduction Concepts for Leading-Edge Slat Noise

The leading-edge slat of a high-lift airfoil can be a significant noise contributor during aircraft landing. This paper summarizes the effects of several passive noise reduction devices on the 30P30N high-lift airfoil. Experiments are conducted on a two-dimensional multi-element high-lift airfoil with leading-edge slat extensions, gap filler, and cove filler in an anechoic wind tunnel to evaluate the effect of passive flow control on the acoustics generated by the unsteady flow field. Slat geometry modifications associated with the treatments alter the flow field in the region that dominates the generation of the acoustic field. Three angles of attack (a(k) = 8°, 10°, and 15.5°) and three different Reynolds numbers (Re(c) = 1.2e6, 1.5e6, and 1.71e6) are selected as the test conditions. Steady surface pressure measurements are conducted to assess the effect of the treatments on the lift and drag. Unsteady surface pressure measurements along with the far-field acoustic array measurements are performed to evaluate the changes in near- and far-field pressure fluctuations, respectively. Delay and Sum (DAS) beamforming method is applied to locate the noise sources on the model and provide integrated spectra. Implementation difficulties with the gap filler led to structural integration deficiencies that prevented a fair assessment of this technology. Among the other passive devices, the cove filler s the most effective noise reduction, along with a negligible change in the aerodynamic metrics.

Zhang, Yang↗

Slat Noise Control Using a Slat Gap Filler

The leading edge slat of a high-lift system is one of the main noise contributors on many commercial aircraft during approach. This paper continues our previous studies on the gap filler for passive noise control on the 30P30N high-lift airfoil. An improved implementation of the gap filler was applied to minimize the effects of flow leakage encountered in the previous work, which resulted in spurious noise content in the far-field acoustic spectra. To evaluate the effect of passive flow control on the acoustics generated by the unsteady flow field, anechoic wind tunnel experiments are conducted on the two-dimensional, three-element high-lift airfoil with a gap filler mounted to the slat. The slat geometry modification associated with the gap filler alters the flow field in the cove region that dominates the generation of the acoustic field. A single angle of attack (훼푘=8◦) and three flow speeds corresponding to Reynolds numbersof푅푒푐=1.2푒6,1.5푒6, and1.71푒6are selected as the test conditions. Steady surface pressure measurements are conducted to assess the effect of the treatments on the overall lift. Acoustic array measurements are used to evaluate the influence of the gap filler on the radiated noise. Delay and Sum beamforming is applied to locate the noise sources on the model and to provide the integrated spectra. The gap filler is found to eliminate the narrowband peaks in the acoustic spectra and, also, to yield a 10 dB reduction in the broadband noise in comparison with the baseline case. Time-resolved Particle Image Velocimetry results show that the flow features are significantly altered with the presence of the gap filler, which leads to a more stable slat cove shear layer and, thus, to weaker pressure and velocity fluctuations.

Yang Zhang↗

Effects of Porous Gap Fillers on 30P30N Leading-Edge SlatNoise. Part I: Surface Pressure and Acoustics

The leading edge slat of a high-lift system is one of the main contributors to airframe noise during approach. In a previous experimental study, we assessed the performance of an impermeable slat gap filler as a passive flow control device to reduce the slat noise associated with a two-dimensional, three-element high-lift airfoil. The present paper, the first of two parts,represents a follow-on investigation to assess the relative efficacy of permeable gap fillers thatallow successively higher amounts of flow to pass through the gap. To evaluate the influence of this passive flow control device on the acoustics generated by the unsteady flow near the slat, experiments are conducted in an anechoic wind tunnel by mounting a gap filler to the slat element of the two-dimensional 30P30N high-lift configuration. Measurements are performed at a single geometric angle of attack (𝛼𝑘=8◦) and three different flow speeds that correspond to Reynolds numbers of𝑅𝑒𝑐=1.2𝑒6,1.5𝑒6, and1.71𝑒6, respectively. Steady surface pressure measurements are used to gauge the influence of the permeable gap filler treatments on the overall lift. The effect of each treatment on the radiated noise is analyzed via acoustic array measurements, followed by delay-and-sum beamforming to locate the slat noise sources and to provide the integrated acoustic spectra. The porous gap fillers are found to eliminate the narrowband peaks in the acoustic spectra and, also, to yield a 10 dB reduction in the broadband noise in comparison with the baseline case with no gap filler. The porous gap filler with thelowest permeability acts similar to the impermeable gap filler examined previously. However, the aerodynamics and noise reduction both degrade with increasing permeability. An accompanying abstract describes the particle image velocimetry measurements of the flowfield within the slat cove and on either side of the permeable gap f

slat noise↗

An Assessment of Homogeneous Mixture Method Cavitation Models in Predicting Cavitation in Nozzle Flow

The homogeneous mixture method (HMM) is a popular class of models used in the computational prediction of cavitation. Several cavitation models have been developed for use with HMM to govern the development and destruction of vapor in a fluid system. Two models credited to Kunz and Schnerr–Sauer are studied in this paper. The goal of this work is to provide an assessment of the two cavitation submodels in their ability to predict cavitation in nozzle flow. Validation data were obtained via experiments which employ both passive cavitation detection, (PCD) via acoustic sensing and optical cavitation detection (OCD) via camera imaging. The experiments provide quantitative information on cavitation inception and qualitative information on the vapor in the nozzle. The results show that initial vapor formation is not predicted precisely but within reason. A sensitivity analysis of the models to input parameters shows that the Schnerr–Sauer method does not depend upon the estimation of nuclei size and number density. Small changes in the vapor formation rate but not the total vapor volume can be seen when weighting parameters are modified. In contrast, changes to the input parameters for the Kunz model greatly change the final total vapor volume prediction. The assessment also highlights the influence of vapor convection within the method. Finally, the analysis shows that if the fluid and nozzle walls do not support nuclei larger than 40 μm, the methods would still predict cavitation when indeed there would be none in practice.

Engineering↗

Applying Acoustic Emission to Large Format Additive Manufacturing

Large format additive manufacturing (AM) is being adapted as a method of producing large structures in a short lead time and cost-effective way. With the growing advancement in AM techniques and application, machine monitoring and part qualification is highly needed. There has been leading research focused on the manufacturing development and feedstock material but minimum research on the structural health monitoring (SHM), defect detection, and nondestructive evaluation (NDE) for large format AM. Scanning large structure using conventional nondestructive testing (NDT) techniques, such as ultrasound or X-ray, and searching for potential defects can be very time consuming, challenging and cost prohibitive. Acoustic emission (AE) is a passive technique that can be used to monitor and locate defect progression in large structures by distributing group of sensors around the part. This research outlines the necessary procedure for implementing AE to AM as a reliability method. The topics this research will display are: (a) Wave propagation/velocity evaluation, (b) an AE attenuation characterization for the anisotropic printed structure and material, (c) background noise measurements of the extruder and gantry system, and (d) assist in optimal sensor selection and placement for monitoring large AM structures with demonstration. This work establishes the foundation for scaling up the SHM-AE system for the large additive platform.

Spencer, Ryan↗