CIU
Centre for Industrial Ultrasonics
www.ciu.ac.uk
Newsletter Spring 2013
CIU Focus Groups produce valuable insights
Towards the end of 2012, the CIU held three separate Industrial Focus
Groups at the Universities of Warwick, Surrey and Lancaster. A range of
potential ideas for the future activities of the CIU were discussed, and
more importantly a diverse range of organisations with an interest in
ultrasonics from SMEs to large high technology multinationals, explained
what they felt the CIU could do to help them. A summary of these
discussions will be published on the CIU website in due course.
Ian Bowbrick moves to IOM3
The CIU would like to thank Ian Bowbrick for all his
help and support, during the past 3 years. Ian was
instrumental in helping to set up both the Chair and
the CIU - and continued to provide invaluable
support, most recently coming up with the idea of the Focus Groups and
engaging external expert consultants to help review and advise the CIU.
Ian has moved to the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, where he
has taken the role of Assistant Director for Professional Development and
Membership. All involved with the CIU would like to wish Ian luck in his
new role and we look forward to developing a new relationship with him
through the IOM3.
Visiting Academics Join Group for 2012-2013
In this issue
page 1
key developments
page 2
overview of current
research projects
page 3
new initiatives
In Autumn 2012, the CIU welcomed three visiting academics from
overseas; Dr Lei Kang (Harbin Institute of Technology), Dr. Qi Oyang and
Dr Chen Liang. All three of these academics secured highly prestigious
Chinese CSC Scholarships to work with the CIU, and only eleven such
Scholars are in residence across the entire University.
All three academics are working on various ultrasonic projects, and are
integrated with ongoing research activities. One of the academics, Dr Kang,
working on the area of EMATs said "Having been in contact with the group
since 2004, I was delighted when the opportunity arose for a CSC research
scholarship. The group at Warwick is world famous; I have learned many
things in only a few months, and have built a relationship and collaboration
that will last into the future ".
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CIU
Newsletter Spring 2013
Research Project Focus
Each Newsletter will focus on a couple of research projects currently being
undertaken in the CIU. In this edition we highlight two projects: one focused on
testing stainless steel and another medical related project on osteoporosis.
EMATs
for
non-contact
NDE
of
austenitic steel : This EPSRC/industry
funded project addresses some of the
challenges faced by the nuclear industry in
inspecting austenitic stainless steel and
austenitic steel welds. Defects have been
detected in a number of calibration samples
that our partners were not able to detect
using conventional methods, and the SH
guided waves being used can access.
Partners include : National Nuclear
Laboratory Ltd, Rolls Royce Naval Marine
and Serco.
B-scan image showing weld defect in a thick
section, stainless steel weld, >50mm thick.
Signals due to defects are identified within
the dashed boxes shown above.
Understanding the role of heel bone shape in measurements of bone porosity : This student
led, internal research project has looked at the effect of heel bone shape on the measurement of a
parameter called BUA (Bone Ultrasonic
Attenuation), which is a frequency dependent
attenuation parameter that changes with heel
bone porosity. BUA is used as a quick and
relatively cheap test to detect the onset of the
disease osteoporosis, but there are questions
over its reliability. Modelling work has shown,
that it is probably the variation in shape and
thickness of cortical end plates of the heel Finite element modelling of the heel bone with its cortical end plates
has provided insights into how the r the various shapes and features
bone that can lead to unreliable predictions of
of the bone distort the ultrasonic wavefront and change the apparent
bone porosity.
value of BUA. Cotrical endplate effects appear to dominate.
Research Funding Success
During 2012, a number of research proposals were submitted to various funding bodies including
EPSRC, the EU and RCNDE. Since the start of this year we have been awarded one EPSRC grant
and an EU grant with a total value of over £1.6M. A further proposal was passed by RCNDE and we
await the outcome of the final decision on this third research grant application from EPSRC.
External funding was also obtained allowing us to take on two new PhD students and an EngD
student, all of whom started in October 2012.
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CIU
Newsletter Spring 2013
New starters
Students : Three new students joined the group at the end of 2012 working
on a range of ultrasonic related projects.
Tobias Eriksson is an industrially
funded PhD student working with Elster
to develop new ultrasonic transducer
technologies for flow measurement.
Yavor Arnaudov is a PhD student investigating the
use of non-contact ultrasonic methods to determine
the
reliability
of
ultrasonic
non-linearity
measurements that are often used as a
measurement of residual life fatigue.
Matt Clough is an EngD student working on
developing Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducers
for pipeline corrosion measurements, by examining
guided wave dispersion.
Planned conference attendance for 2013 : Members of CIU will be presenting their work at a
number of national and international conferences in 2013. The list currently includes:
Laser Ultrasonics 2013 (Japan, May 2013)
QNDE 2012 (Baltimore, July 2013)
NDT 2013 (UK, September 2013)
IEEE Int. Ultrasonics. Symp. Prague (July, 2013)
Asia Pacific Conference on NDT (India, November 2013)
Contact Details:
Steve Dixon (Director of CIU), University of Warwick, Dept of Physics, Coventry CV4 7AL
email : S.M.Dixon@warwick.ac.uk
tel: 44 (0) 2476 573877
mobile: 44 (0) 7920 531275
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