A.J. Huijer
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8 records found
1
Despite the significant potential of composite propellers for marine propulsion systems, uncertainties in their fatigue behaviour have so far hindered their wide-spread adoption. These uncertainties can arise from imperfections during the manufacturing process, operational conditions different than the ones considered in the design, coating deterioration leading to water ingress, impact events, and more. Such factors can have significant impact on the lifetime of the propeller, which is typically expected to endure billions of cycles. Structural health monitoring (SHM) has the potential to mitigate this issue by real-time recording and assessing the structural response and integrity of the propeller. Such an SHM system should neither affect the propeller performance nor its load-bearing capacity. In addition to providing insights into the current structural integrity of the propeller, an SHM system may also enable enhanced estimation of the remaining lifetime, thereby minimizing the risk of unexpected failures and downtime.
This thesis investigates the feasibility of developing composite marine propellers with an embedded SHM system based on piezoelectric sensors. These sensors are capable of performing strain monitoring (with application in load/response estimation) and acoustic emission monitoring (with application in damage identification). Three main topics have been studied; (i) the feasibility of measuring dynamic strains in the propeller blade using the embedded sensors, (ii) the effect of embedding piezoelectric sensors on the structural integrity, and (iii) the feasibility of measuring and assessing damage-induced acoustic emissions using the embedded sensors. An analysis framework has been proposed for the identification, classification, and localisation of acoustic emissions in thick composite structures…
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Despite the significant potential of composite propellers for marine propulsion systems, uncertainties in their fatigue behaviour have so far hindered their wide-spread adoption. These uncertainties can arise from imperfections during the manufacturing process, operational conditions different than the ones considered in the design, coating deterioration leading to water ingress, impact events, and more. Such factors can have significant impact on the lifetime of the propeller, which is typically expected to endure billions of cycles. Structural health monitoring (SHM) has the potential to mitigate this issue by real-time recording and assessing the structural response and integrity of the propeller. Such an SHM system should neither affect the propeller performance nor its load-bearing capacity. In addition to providing insights into the current structural integrity of the propeller, an SHM system may also enable enhanced estimation of the remaining lifetime, thereby minimizing the risk of unexpected failures and downtime.
This thesis investigates the feasibility of developing composite marine propellers with an embedded SHM system based on piezoelectric sensors. These sensors are capable of performing strain monitoring (with application in load/response estimation) and acoustic emission monitoring (with application in damage identification). Three main topics have been studied; (i) the feasibility of measuring dynamic strains in the propeller blade using the embedded sensors, (ii) the effect of embedding piezoelectric sensors on the structural integrity, and (iii) the feasibility of measuring and assessing damage-induced acoustic emissions using the embedded sensors. An analysis framework has been proposed for the identification, classification, and localisation of acoustic emissions in thick composite structures…
Measurement of transient pressure distribution on maritime structures is important for the assessment of the hydrodynamic loads applied. The commonly used pressure sensors are mostly bulky, need to be bolted to the structure, and/or only provide point-wise measurements. In this paper, an elastic matrix layer with a network of embedded piezoelectric sensors is proposed to address these issues. For experimental validation, a 400 × 400 × 5 mm epoxy layer is fabricated embedding 25 piezoelectric sensors on a square grid in accordance with Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre points. A finite element based inverse procedure is developed to reconstruct the pressure field from the electric potentials measured by the piezoelectric transducers. Feasibility of the concept is evaluated by measuring and reconstructing the pressure field generated by a travelling wave in a water tank. Sensitivity of the layer is also investigated through the experiments. The results indicate that the retrofit layer is capable of pressure field reconstruction, and that the presence of disturbances on the sensing surface does not affect the measurements in a notable way, while non-ideal conditions of the mounting can have a significant impact on the accuracy of the measurements. The results highlight the potential of the concept in pressure distribution measurements.
Marine propellers made of fibre-reinforced composites have demonstrated the potential to outperform metallic propellers in terms of efficiency and under-water noise radiation. For full realisation of this potential in a tailored design process with realistic constraints, accurate information on the hydrodynamic loads acting on composite marine propellers and the structural integrity is of key importance. It is conceptualised that this information can be acquired without disturbing propeller hydrodynamics using a network of piezoelectric sensors embedded inside the blade. In this paper, feasibility of this concept has been investigated numerically and experimentally. Hydrodynamic loads on a composite propeller obtained from numerical simulations were used to assess the sensitivity of piezoelectric sensors in measuring the dynamic strain field due to the blade deformation. Subsequently, 25 small-scale carbon-epoxy composite samples were manufactured with embedded piezoelectric wafer sensors of different sizes, and subjected to non-destructive and destructive loading scenarios. Feasibility of measuring strains at different frequency ranges and damage-induced acoustic emissions was quantitatively assessed from these experiments. Furthermore, the influence of the embedded sensors on the ultimate strength and toughness of the specimens was investigated. It was found that at least 92% of the studied propeller blade would have dynamic strains measurable up to the first four harmonics by the considered piezoelectric sensors. In a four-point bending setup, it was additionally demonstrated that the embedded piezoelectric sensor captured damage-induced acoustic emissions up to specimen failure with an average signal to noise ratio of 17 dB. The results indicate that embedded piezoelectric sensor networks can have the capability to measure both low-frequency dynamic strains in composite marine propeller blades and damage-related acoustic emissions.
The recording and processing of acoustic emissions can be used to identify and localise damage mechanisms occurring in engineering structures. In plate-like structures, acoustic emissions propagate through the structure as guided waves. With a measurement location away from the source location, dispersion effects in the guided wave distort the acoustic emission signal. The distortion of the original signal hampers identification of damage mechanisms. This research describes and assesses a method to reconstruct the original acoustic emission signal using dispersion compensation. Simulations and experiments are performed involving thick glass-fibre reinforced plastic laminates. The signal reconstruction on the simulated data gives a reasonable representation of the simulated signal at the location of interest. In the experimental case, similarity slightly degrades. Deviation in arrival time between original measurement and reconstruction is attributed to a possible discrepancy in material properties in reality versus the properties used in the reconstruction.