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Procedia Structural
Structural IntegrityIntegrity
Procedia5 (2017) 11681175
00 (2016) 000000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

2nd International Conference on Structural Integrity, ICSI 2017, 4-7 September 2017, Funchal,
Madeira, Portugal

FatigueConference
XV Portuguese crack monitoring using
on Fracture, PCF 2016,plastic optical
10-12 February fibre
2016, Paosensor
de Arcos, Portugal

Thermo-mechanical Dong Yang modeling

aa
, Jinqi Wang ofaa, aDanhighLiaa, pressure
K.S.C. Kuang turbine
bb
* blade of an
School
School of Civilairplane
of Civil Engineering, gas
Engineering, Hefei turbine
University of engine
of Techonlogy, 230009
230009 Hefei,
Hefei, China
a
a
Hefei University Techonlogy, China
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, 117576 Singapore, Singapore
bb
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, 117576 Singapore, Singapore

P. Brandoa, V. Infanteb, A.M. Deusc*

a
AbstractDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, Instituto Superior Tcnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001 Lisboa,
Abstract
Portugal
b
IDMEC, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Instituto Superior Tcnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001 Lisboa,
Optical
Optical fibre
fibre sensors
sensors have
have shown
shown their
their excellent
excellent potential
potential for
for structural
Portugalmonitoring
structural monitoring inin aa variety
variety of
of engineering
engineering structures.
structures. This
This paper
paper
discussed
discussed
c
CeFEMA,the feasibility
feasibility of
the Department of real-time
real-time monitoring
of Mechanicalmonitoring of fatigue
ofInstituto
Engineering, crack
crack using
fatigue Superior using an
an extrinsic
extrinsic
Tcnico, plastic
plastic
Universidade optical fibre
optical Av.
de Lisboa, fibre sensor.
sensor.
Rovisco This
This
Pais, 1, intensity-based
intensity-based
1049-001 Lisboa,
plastic
plastic optical
optical fibre
fibre (POF)
(POF) sensor
sensor was
was fabricated
fabricated by
by connecting two
two cleaved
connectingPortugal cleaved optical
optical fibres
fibres into
into aa capillary
capillary tube
tube and
and inserting
inserting some
some
in-filling
in-filling into
into the
the tube
tube to
to improve
improve the the sensitivity
sensitivity ofof the
the sensor.
sensor. TheThe aim
aim of of this
this sensor
sensor is
is to
to detect
detect crack
crack initiation
initiation and
and subsequently
subsequently
monitor
monitor the
the propagation
propagation of of crack
crack under
under fatigue
fatigue load,
load, relying
relying only
only onon the
the plastic
plastic fibre
fibre sensor
sensor signal
signal and
and aa simple
simple signal
signal processing
processing
Abstract
method.
method. Performance
Performance of of the
the fabricated
fabricated POF
POF sensor
sensor was
was evaluated
evaluated by by comparing
comparing with with another
another technique,
technique, namely,
namely, acoustic
acoustic emission
emission
(AE)
(AE) method.
method. TheThe results
results show
show remarkable
remarkable resemblance
resemblance in in terms
terms ofof crack
crack initiation
initiation and
and propagation
propagation identification
identification exhibited
exhibited by
by
During
both their operation, modern aircraft engine components are subjected to increasingly demanding operating conditions,
both of
of the
the sensors,
sensors, highlighting
highlighting thethe potential
potential ofof the
the proposed
proposed method
method for for crack
crack initiation
initiation detection
detection and
and subsequent
subsequent monitoring
monitoring of
of
especially the highThe
crack pressure turbine (HPT) blades. Such conditions cause these parts tohealth
undergo different tool
types of time-dependent
crack propagation.
propagation. The simplicity
simplicity of of the
the technique
technique renders
renders it it an
an attractive
attractive structure
structure health monitoring
monitoring tool forfor fatigue
fatigue crack
crack
degradation, one of which is creep. A model using the finite element method (FEM) was developed, in order to be able to predict
monitoring.
monitoring.
the creep behaviour of HPT blades. Flight data records (FDR) for a specific aircraft, provided by a commercial aviation
2017
company,
2017TheThe Authors.
TheAuthors.
Authors. Published
Published by Elsevier
bythermal
Elsevier B.V.
B.V.
2017 were used to obtain
Published by Elsevier B.V.and mechanical data for three different flight cycles. In order to create the 3D model
Peer-review
Peer-review under
under responsibility
responsibility of
of the
the Scientific
Scientific Committee
Committee of ICSI
ICSI 2017.
of2017 2017.
needed for
Peer-review theresponsibility
under FEM analysis, of theaScientific
HPT blade scrap
Committee was
of ICSIscanned, and its chemical composition and material properties were
obtained. The data that was gathered was fed into the FEM model and different simulations were run, first with a simplified 3D
Keywords: sensors; plastic optical fibre; intensity
Keywords: sensors;
rectangular blockplastic optical
shape, fibre;to
in order better loss;
intensity loss; structural
structural
establish health
health monitoring;
the model, monitoring;
and then withRMS
RMStheenvelope;
real 3Dfatigue
envelope; meshcrack
fatigue crack
obtained from the blade scrap. The
overall expected behaviour in terms of displacement was observed, in particular at the trailing edge of the blade. Therefore such a
model can be useful in the goal of predicting turbine blade life, given a set of FDR data.
1.
1. Introduction
Introduction
2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review
Many under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of PCF 2016.
Many different
different structure
structure health
health monitoring
monitoring approaches,
approaches, relying
relying on
on the
the analysis
analysis of
of different
different physical
physical phenomena
phenomena
and experimental
Keywords:
and measurements,
High Pressure
experimental have
Turbine Blade;
measurements, been
Creep;
have introduced
Finite
been and
and reported
Element Method;
introduced 3D Model;in
reported the
the literature
literature (Doebling
inSimulation. (Doebling et
et al.,
al., 1996,
1996, Doebling
Doebling

*
* Corresponding
Corresponding author.
author. Tel.:
Tel.: +86-18673191152;
+86-18673191152; fax:
fax: +86-055162901432.
+86-055162901432.
E-mail
E-mail address:
address: yangdong@hfut.edu.cn
yangdong@hfut.edu.cn

2452-3216
2452-3216 2017
2017 The
The Authors.
Authors. Published
Published by
by Elsevier
Elsevier B.V.
B.V.
Peer-review under
* Corresponding
Peer-review responsibility
underauthor. Tel.: +351of
responsibility the
the Scientific
Scientific Committee
of218419991. Committee of
of ICSI
ICSI 2017.
2017.
E-mail address: amd@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

2452-3216 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of PCF 2016.
2452-3216 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of ICSI 2017
10.1016/j.prostr.2017.07.029
2 Dong K.S.C.
Yang etKuang et al. / Procedia Structural
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et al., 1998, Sohn et al., 2002, Farrar and Worden, 2007, Fan and Qiao, 2010). Of all the various types of damage and
defect, in engineering structures, crack is arguably a key threat to the safety of structures. Crack induced by fatigue
loading or corrosion is a very common problem in aged structures, and should be detected and monitored or repair
early. Thus, many crack monitoring techniques which should provide early warning is highly desirable.
Conventionally, numerous methods has been used to detect cracks such as ultrasound, acoustic emission (AE) and
eddy current techniques and others. Ultrasound method is one of the most popular methods for crack inspection. Tua
et al. (Tua et al., 2004) used Lamb wave which was actuated by a piezoelectric transducer (PZT) to detect crack in
plate structures. Ohara et al. (Ohara et al., 2008) introduced a method to investigate the initiation and propagation of
crack using a sub-harmonic phased array ultrasonic testing, while Roberts and Talebzadeh (Roberts and Talebzadeh,
2003) studied the use of AE technique to monitor fatigue crack propagation in steel, welded steel compact tension
specimens and T-section girders. Weekes et al. (Weekes et al., 2012) established the probability of detection for eddy
therm inspection of small fatigue damage in laboratory-type metal beam specimens. In recent years, sensors such as
optical fibres have been increasingly applied to monitor various engineering structures and the potential of optical
fibre sensors to monitor a variety of structural health parameters such as strain, temperature in various engineering
structures has been published by many scholars. The advantages of optical fibre-based sensors are well-known which
include their light weight, being spark-free, immunity from electromagnetic interference, minimal intrusiveness due
to their relatively small size and they do not corrode. In the literatures, a number of optical fibre sensors have been
proposed to monitor the crack in structures, and reviews of these approaches have been given elsewhere. For example,
Rossi and Maou (Rossi and Maou, 1989) embedded optical fibres in concrete to detect cracks based on the principle
that light signal can be interrupted by fibre breakage due to the appearance of cracks. Bao (Bao, 2012) monitored the
crack by fibre Bragg grating sensors. Bao et al. (Bao et al., 2013) proposed a on-line fatigue crack detection method
based on FBG crack monitoring test bed. The intensity-based optical fibre (IOF) sensor used in crack monitoring is
very attractive especially in the view of its cost and simplicity in installation and maintenance. It is easy to construct
using simple and low cost instrumentation such as LEDs and photodiodes. The IOF sensor represents one of the earliest
and perhaps the most basic type of optical fibre sensor that has been used for SHM (Kuang and Cantwell, 2003). In
applications the IOF sensor has showed excellent ability to monitor the oscillatory response under dynamic loading in
real time(Kuang et al., 2004). POFs, compared to their glass-based counterparts, offer simplicity in handling, ease of
termination and lower cost. Moreover, POFs are much less fragile, making it easier to install in harsh environments.
Indeed, recent research using POFs has highlighted their potential as versatile and highly cost-effective sensors for
SHM (Kuang et al., 2009, Peters, 2011, Bilro et al., 2012). In this paper, a integrating intensity-based POFs sensor
setup is applied for real-time monitoring initiation and propagation of fatigue crack. IPOFs sensor is introduced for
the first time to monitor crack initiation and propagation at the same time. This system is validated through a laboratory
experiment where its efficiency and accuracy are evaluated by comparing its results to those obtained through the
1170 K.S.C.
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acoustic emission (AE) sensors. The result shows that the proposed sensor has the potential to monitor crack initiation
and propagation in real-time.

2. Crack monitoring sensor working principle

Badcock (Badcock, 1999) introduced the principle of intensity-based sensor and evaluated the basic performance
of this sensor in 1990s. The optical signal variation due to the change in distance between the cleaved POFs is well
discussed in (Kuang et al., 2004). Figure 1 illustrates the basic principle of measurement of the IPOFs sensor. The
longitudinal separation of two cleaved POFs facing each other results in a change of the output light intensity.

Fig. 1. The schematic drawing showing the sensing principle of the IPOFs sensor

All of the POFs sensors used in this paper were fabricated by our laboratory. As shown in figure 2, the sensors were
fabricated basically similar as extrinsic POFs sensors. The IPOFs sensor was fabricated by enclosing two cleaved
POFs in to a specially designed PTPE tube. In contract to previously reported sensors, a small piece of 5 mm long
special fibre was inserted into the cavity space (formed between the two cleaved POFs) in the proposed sensor which
can take the place of air gap relied and liquid relied sensor. It will be shown that by special fibre inserted solution, the
changes in the separation of the cleaved ends can be obtained clearly.

Fig. 2.Basic principle of proposed IPOFs sensor

 K.S.C. Kuang et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 5 (2017) 11681175 1171
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3. Experimental methodology

To simulate the initiation and propagation of crack, a three-point-bending fatigue test was carried out on a steel
specimen using a universal testing machine (INSTRON MODEL 1334) as shown in Figure 3. The dimensions of the
specimen(200 mm 40 mm 20 mm length width thickness respectively). A notch of 6 mm was machined at
the bottom mid-span to guide the crack. A sinusoidal cyclic loading was applied on the specimen. The proposed IPOFs
sensors were attached to the bottom of the specimen shown in Figure 3 in order to collect the information of the crack
initiation and propagation as much as possible. The POFs sensor readings were sampled at 50 Hz . As shown in the
Figure 3, two AE sensors were attached to the top and side surfaces of the specimen, the sampling rate and gain of
preamplifier were 5 MKz and 40 dB respectively, and the threshold for AE hits was set at 60 dB .

Fig. 3. The fatigue crack propagation monitoring system

3.1. Signal processing algorithm

According to the structural mechanics, crack initiation and propagation under a sinusoidal fatigue load are
apparently non-stationary, containing envelop modulation. The retrieval results show that the methods used in this
field are usually for stationary signal, and there is no commercial solution for monitoring crack initiation and
propagation. So a suitable algorithm for the crack monitoring has remained elusive. A crack monitoring algorithm is
proposed in this section using the root mean square (RMS)-based envelope detector and a Hilbert-based filter. With
this algorithm, the crack initiation and propagation can be properly obtained.
1172 K.S.C. Kuang et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 5 (2017) 11681175
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Suppose the original optical signal recorded using oscilloscope by x t , which is recorded with suitable sampling
frequency. Then, the root mean square (RMS) sequence was calculated from raw signal of POFs sensor over a moving
window. The resulting signal can be expressed by

1 2 N
R i

k
x i*w1 x 2i*w 2 x 2 i *w k i =1, 2, ,
k
(3)

where i is the number of the moving window, N is the length of the original signal, is the length of the moving
window. After that, the pre-processed RMS sequence R i were then ready to be analysed.
The obtained RMS sequence was further processed by passing it through a Hilbert transform (HT)-based filter
(Chen and Wang, 2012, Feldman, 2011). As a result, the noise and other usefulness components in the signal will be
removed, and the recovered bandpass sequence and envelop are ready to be analysed further.

3.2. Crack initiation and propagation identification

The smoothed envelop and high frequency sequence recovered using Hilbert transform-based filter are shown in
Figure 4 (a) and (b) respectively. In Figure 4 (a), the continuous red line along with the increasing RMS means the
crack propagates gradually. On the other hand, the initiation of crack was not expected to result in significant
detectable changes in the time-domain POFs sensor signal. The proposed signal processing is, however, capable of
identifying the small signal discontinuities in the signal, which were caused by the initiation or propagation of crack
in the specimen. When the plot begins to show increasing amplitude of local RMS value (at approximately 4000 s ),
the initiation of crack could be inferred. During 4000 s to 8000 s , the crack propagated stable. The amplitude increases
dramatically at 8000 s , corresponding to further fast crack propagation. The slight change in the amplitude of the
curve at time 4000 s in the plot further corroborates the method highlighting the potential of the IPOFs sensor in
detecting anomaly related to crack initiation of the specimen under fatigue load.

(a)
 6 DongK.S.C.
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(b)

Fig. 4. The results of IPOFs sensor (a) The trend of crack propagation; (b) High frequency band.

3.3. Comparison and discussion

To validate the response and accuracy of proposed method for crack initiation and propagation in steel specimen,
another approach was introduced in this experiment, namely the detection of acoustic emission using a pair of AE
sensors. For the AE sensors, the results obtained during the fatigue test is shown in Figure 5. The AE hits with
relatively high amplitude first appeared at about 3900 s , which indicate the occurrence of crack. This reading
compares well to the result obtained using the POFs sensors shown in Figure 4 (b). The density of AE hits begins to
increase dramatically after 7800 s , indicative of the rapid propagation of crack. This result shows consistency with
that of the processed POFs sensor data (Figure 4(b)) where the amplitude of high frequency band was found to increase
rapidly after approximately 8000 s .

Fig. 5. The results from AE sensor

The comparison of results between AE sensor and the POFs sensor shows that the proposed POFs sensor in
conjunction with the algorithm used in this study is able to monitor both fatigue crack initiation and its propagation
in real-time with a good degree of sensitivity and accuracy.
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4. Conclusion

The paper has presented a POF sensor based method to monitor crack initiation and propagation under fatigue
loading. In order to extract the feature associated with crack initiation and propagation, RMS envelope and Hilbert
transfer-based filter extracted the envelope and high frequency components embedded in the POFs sensor signal by
decomposing the raw data obtained under fatigue loading. The resulting envelope plot was shown to be effective in
tracking the crack propagation in the steel structures. In addition, analysis of the high frequency component data, it
was demonstrated that the increasing amplitude level could infer as crack initiation while further increase in the
amplitude readings were indicative of progressive crack propagation. To validate the POFs sensor, AE sensors was
used to detect and monitor the fatigue crack of the specimen. The study highlights the potential of the POFs sensor in
monitoring crack initiation and propagation under cyclic fatigue loading.

Acknowledgements

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