Health monitoring of bolted joints using the time reversal method and piezoelectric transducers

In this paper, the time reversal method based on piezoelectric active sensing is investigated for health monitoring of bolted joints. Experiments are conducted on bolted joints to study the relationship between the time reversal focused signal peak amplitudes and the bolt preload. Two piezoelectric patches are bonded on two different sides of a bolted joint. Any one of the piezoelectric patches can be used as an actuator to generate an ultrasonic wave, and the other one can be used as a sensor to detect the propagated wave. With the time reversal method, the received response signal is reversed in the time domain and then is re-emitted as an excitation signal to acquire the time reversal focused signals. The experimental results show that the time reversal focused signal peak amplitudes increase with the increasing bolt preload until reaching saturation, and when the bolt preload increases to a certain value, the focused signal peak amplitudes will remain unchanged. Experiments show that the surface roughness of the bolted joint impacts the saturation value. A higher surface roughness value corresponds to a higher saturation value. In addition, the proposed method has a high signal to noise ratio benefiting from the time reversal method time and space focusing ability. (paper)