The aim of this paper is to develop a novel method to determine the severity of a damage in a thin plate. This paper presents a novel fault detection and diagnosis approach employing a new electromagnetic acoustic transducer, called EMAT, together with a complex signal processing method. The method consists in the recognition of a fault that exists within the structure, the fault location, i.e. the identification of the geometric position of damage, and the determining the significance of the damage, which indicates the importance or severity of the defect. The main scientific novelties presented in this paper is: to develop of a new type of electromagnetic acoustic transducer; to incorporate wavelet transforms for signal representation enhancements; to investigate multi-parametric analysis for noise identification and defect classification; to study attenuation curves properties for defect localization improvement; flaw sizing and location algorithm development.

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The effect of adding polypropylene fibers; with different shapes and volume fractions; on the compressive strength, modulus of rupture, load-deflection curve and flexural toughness (equivalent flexural strength ratio) of concrete was investigated. Crimped and twisted polypropylene fibers were used with 0.0%, 0.2%, 0.4% and 0.6% volume fractions. It was found that the compressive strength, flexural strength and the equivalent flexural strength ratio of concrete increased about 11%, 25% and 40% respectively by adding 0.6% volume fraction of twisted polypropylene fiber. In addition; it was found that the contribution of polypropylene fiber to the flexural strength and flexural toughness was more effective when twisted polypropylene fiber was added comparing to crimped polypropylene fibers. The experimental results were used in numerical example using FAARFIELD program to explore the airfield pavement thickness reduction resulted from polypropylene fiber incorporation.

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The natural frequency is the inherent characteristics of the objects which would be reflected during the vibration. Firstly, obtained the calculation results of the natural frequency of the cantilever sheet, and then obtained cantilever sheet experimental values through experiments based on hammering method . According to real data and imaginary data of the experimental frequency response curve , used levy method in order to fit the natural frequency. The results show little difference among finite element values, experimental values and the values based on levy method.