Abstract:Among structural health monitoring techniques, the nonlinear ultrasonic spectroscopy method is an effective diagnostic approach to detect nonlinear damage, such as fatigue cracking, due to its sensitivity to incipient structural changes. In this paper, a nonlinear ultrasonic modulation method was developed to detect and locate a fatigue crack on an aluminum plate. As opposed to the nonlinear wave modulation method, which recognizes the modulation of low-frequency vibrations and high-frequency ultrasonic waves, the proposed method recognizes the modulation of tone bursts and high-frequency ultrasonic waves. In the experiment, a Hanning window modulated sinusoidal tone burst and a continuous sinusoidal excitation were simultaneously imposed on the piezoelectric array that was bonded to the surface of an aluminum plate. The data was processed with short-time Fourier transform. Both the tone burst modulation and the continuous sinusoidal excitation were observed in different actuator-sensor paths, indicating the presence and location of the fatigue crack. These results showed that the proposed method was capable of successfully detecting and locating the fatigue crack.