Fatigue evaluation of metallic components based on chaotic characteristics of second harmonic generation signal

Abstract

In the nonlinear ultrasonic technique, the nonlinear received signal, such as second harmonic generation (SHG) signal in higher harmonic experiments, is complicated and non-stationary time series which reflects the fatigue damage of metal components. To effectively evaluate the fatigue damage of metal components, especially the earlier fatigue damage, the chaos and fractal theory are proposed to analyze the received signal of higher harmonic experiments. Chaotic characteristics, for example Lyapunov exponent, correlation dimension and Kolmogorov entropy, are extracted to evaluate the fatigue damage. Experiments results indicate that chaotic characteristics can reasonably characterize and evaluate the fatigue state of beams, which the variation trend of chaotic characteristics has a close relationship with fatigue crack propagation. Furthermore, chaotic characteristics are very sensitive to earlier fatigue damage of used connecting rods, especially the Lyapunov exponent. Therefore, chaos and fractal theory could effectively extract the nonlinear received signals, and chaotic characteristics could reasonably evaluate the fatigue damage state of metal components.