Maintenance for concrete structures such as buildings, bridges, and tunnels is necessary, because it is thought that a lot of them show deterioration. As a periodic inspection, a hammering test is the most popular method. However, it has several problems. One of the problems is that it is difficult to inspect the places where people cannot reach. Therefore, non contact inspection methods have been developed. As a non-contact inspection method, we propose a system consisting of a high-power directional sound source and a scanning laser doppler vibrometer (SLDV). In this method, an air-borne sound wave is used for the excitation of a concrete wall, and then the vibration velocities on the concrete wall are measured two-dimensionally by the SLDV. From the vibration velocity, defective parts can be detected. In this paper, we describe two types of experiment on the feasibility of our proposed method. In these experiments, concrete wall test pieces, which have artificial defects, are used. From the experimental results, we confirmed the effectiveness of our proposed method as a non contact inspection method for concrete structures.

We study a noncontact inspection method for large-scale structures such as tunnels and bridges. This method involves the use of a high-powered sound source and a scanning laser Doppler vibrometer (SLDV). In our previous study, we proposed a tone burst wave method to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the measured result. Using this method, a defect that was difficult to detect using our previous method was detected. In this study, we examined the detectable size and depth of the defect by using a model wall with circular defects. The distance between the sound source and the concrete test piece was 5 m, and the output sound pressure was about 100 dB near the surface of the concrete test piece. As the transmitted wave, tone burst waves with different center frequencies from 500 to 7000 Hz were used. A conventional investigation by the hammer method was also simultaneously carried out for comparison and almost identical performance was confirmed. From the experimental result, we confirmed that the bending resonance frequency detected was proportional to the depth of the circular defect, and was in inverse proportion to the plane size (area) coincident to the analytical result for a circular plate. We also found that the vibration energy of the defect shows a strong dependency on its depth. Therefore, the possibility of defect depth estimation using the resonance frequency and the vibration energy ratio is expected. In the future, a practical investigation system that will replace the hammer method might be developed.

In recent years, the detachment of concrete from bridges or tunnels and the degradation of concrete structures have become serious social problems. The importance of inspection, repair, and updating is recognized in measures against degradation. We have so far studied the noncontact acoustic inspection method using airborne sound and the laser Doppler vibrometer. In this method, depending on the surface state (reflectance, dirt, etc.), the quantity of the light of the returning laser decreases and optical noise resulting from the leakage of light reception arises. Some influencing factors are the stability of the output of the laser Doppler vibrometer, the low reflective characteristic of the measurement surface, the diffused reflection characteristic, measurement distance, and laser irradiation angle. If defect detection depends only on the vibration energy ratio since the frequency characteristic of the optical noise resembles white noise, the detection of optical noise resulting from the leakage of light reception may indicate a defective part. Therefore, in this work, the combination of the vibrational energy ratio and spectrum entropy is used to judge whether a measured point is healthy or defective or an abnormal measurement point. An algorithm that enables more vivid detection of a defective part is proposed. When our technique was applied in an experiment with real concrete structures, the defective part could be extracted more vividly and the validity of our proposed algorithm was confirmed.

The noncontact acoustic inspection method focuses on the resonance phenomenon, and the target surface is measured by being vibrated with an airborne sound. It is possible to detect internal defects near the surface layer of a concrete structure from a long distance. However, it requires a fairly long measurement time to achieve the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio just to find some resonance frequencies. In our method using the conventional waveform “single-tone burst wave”, only one frequency was used for one-sound-wave emission to achieve a high S/N ratio using a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) at a safe low power (e.g., He–Ne 1 mW). On the other hand, in terms of the difference in propagation velocity between laser light and sound waves, the waveform that can be used for high-speed measurement was devised using plural frequencies for one-sound-wave emission (“multitone burst wave”). The measurement time at 35 measurement points has been dramatically decreased from 210 to 28 s when using this waveform. Accordingly, 7.5-fold high-speed measurement became possible. By some demonstration experiments, we confirmed the effectiveness of our measurement technique.

This paper describes a new method for in vivo sound measurement in the reflection mode. The mean sound speed between the reflector and linear array transducer is measured using the following three parameters: time of flight, time of flight difference, and distance between two receiver elements. To detect time of flight, the system delay-line time compensator is adjusted to obtain the sharpest reflector image. This method was evaluated in vivo in human livers, specifically 26 normal, 27 cirrhotic, and 15 fatty livers. The mean sound speed between diaphragm and the transducer was obtained. The measured sound speed was significantly higher in cirrhotic livers and lower in fatty livers.