A system for determining a trigger amplitude indicating a precursor to a material fracture in a specimen under test includes a microphone converting acoustic emission emitted by the specimen under test into electrical signals. A load is exerted upon the specimen under test and the acoustic emission are emitted when the load causes the specimen under test to undergo deformation prior to the material fracture. A control module is in electrical communication with the microphone and executes instructions to monitor the electrical signals generated by the microphone and filter the electrical signals generated by the microphone. The control module converts the electrical signals generated by the microphone into individual frequency components based on a fast Fourier Transform (FFT). The individual frequency components each include a peak intensity. The control module determines the trigger amplitude based on the peak intensity of the individual frequency components of the FFT.

A method of fabricating and controlling a thick-film transducer array for steering and focusing ultrasonic waves within a substrate volume is provided. A ceramic film composition can be coated on a substrate volume in one or more layers. The ceramic film can be masked with a plastic sheet out of which an electrode pattern is cut. Conductive electrode material can be applied to the pattern to create a transducer array that can be polarized with an applied electric field. A method of controlling a thick-film transducer array comprises exciting one or more array elements to generate a wavefield in a substrate volume, the wavefield can be reflected by features within the substrate volume, one or more array elements can receive reflected wavefield signals, and images of the insonified substrate volume can be generated.

Systems and techniques for measuring process characteristics including electrolyte distribution in a battery cell. A non-destructive method for analyzing a battery cell includes determining acoustic features at two or more locations of the battery cell, the acoustic features based on one or more of acoustic signals travelling through at least one or more portions of the battery cell during one or more points in time or responses to the acoustic signals obtained during one or more points in time, wherein the one or more points in time correspond to one or more stages of electrolyte distribution in the battery cell. One or more characteristics of the battery cell are determined based on the acoustic features at the two or more locations of the battery cell.

A system for performing computer-assisted image analysis of welds and related methods is disclosed. Digital images are captured at a worksite and sent to a remote image analysis system of a weld analytics system that analyzes images to determine whether the images conform to weld specifications. The remote image analysis system may be trained by artificial intelligence or machine learning.

A computer system is provided for processing ultrasonic data of an ultrasonic probe applied to an area of an aircraft component that includes carbon fiber reinforced polymer. C-scan data is obtained and a preliminary mesh is defined over the C-scan data by taking into account the underlying structural or mechanical characteristics of the analyzed component. The mesh is further refined and data gathered for each mesh cell. A heat map is generated based on the mesh.

An ultrasonic scanning device includes at least one pair of cylindrical rollers. The axes of each pair of cylindrical rollers are parallel to each other. A liquid for transmitting the ultrasound is stored in each cylindrical roller. In use, a pair of cylindrical rollers rotate around their respective axes in reverse directions, the test subject passes between the pair of cylindrical rollers and is tested by ultrasound. The ultrasonic scanning device can be applied in the field of lithium-ion battery testing. The internal flaws and health status of the lithium-ion battery can be determined by acquiring an ultrasonic image in the test subject. The device of the present invention has a simple structure and an ingenious conception, and is ready-to-use and less expensive, which is successfully applied in the field of lithium-ion battery testing.

This disclosure provides a system and method for producing ultrasound images based on Full Waveform Inversion (FWI). The system captures acoustic/(an)elastic waves transmitted through and reflected and/or diffracted from a medium. The system performs an FWI process in a time domain in conjunction with an accurate wave propagation solver. The system produces 3D maps of physical parameters that control wave propagation, such as shear and compressional wavespeeds, mass density, attenuation, Poisson's ratio, bulk and shear moduli, impedance, and even the fourth-order elastic tensor containing up to 21 independent parameters, which are of significant diagnostic value, e.g., for medical imaging and non-destructive testing.

A compression technique can be used for processing or storage of acquired acoustic inspection data. For example, data indicative of peak values of an A-scan time-series can be stored to provide a compressed representation of such time-series data. A representation of the original A-scan data can be reconstructed, such as using the data indicative of the peak values, and a digital filter. Such an approach can dramatically reduce a volume of data associated an acoustic acquisition, such as a Full Matrix Capture (FMC) acquisition to be used for Total Focusing Method (TFM) beamforming and related imaging.

An apparatus for scanning a cylindrical part is provided. The apparatus includes an ultrasonic transducer operable to emit ultrasonic waves into and receive ultrasonic waves from the part, with the ultrasonic transducer connected to a translation stage to move it up and down the part and around the circumference of the part. The apparatus does not mechanically contact the cylindrical or maintains contact only with soft elements, such that the apparatus does not damage sensitive parts. The apparatus also contains no magnetic parts, nor any elements that rely on magnetic detection, such that the apparatus is capable of being used in the vicinity of a part exhibiting a strong magnetic field.

A system and method apply an input noisy ultrasonic test (UT) scan image to an input layer of a convolutional neural network, generate a feature map using a convolutional layer, pool the feature map using a pooling layer, apply the pooled feature map to a fully connected layer, generate a de-noised UT scan image, and output the de-noised UT scan image from an output layer.