Influence of Different Crack Factors on Acoustic Wave Signals Using Orthogonal Analysis

Abstract

The existence of cracks in key components of engineering equipment is a huge threat to the safe operation of the equipment. The influence of four factors (length, location, orientation, and width of the crack) on the attenuation characteristic of signal propagation is studied through simulation and experiment. The orthogonal experimental design is applied to design the simulation scheme, and the signal affected by the four factors is simulated by the finite-difference time-domain method. The degree of influence of the different factors is evaluated by conducting an analysis of range and an analysis of variance. The results show that the influence of crack length and location on signal relative attenuation is more remarkable according to the significance level α = 0.05, followed by crack orientation and crack width. The attenuation trend in the experimental results is similar to the simulation. Therefore, the longer the crack length is, the easier it is to be detected by the acoustic wave technique, while the effect of crack orientation and crack width on identifying cracks is limited. The study successfully establishes the relationship between signal parameters and crack factors and offers a theoretical foundation for evaluating the status of cracks in key components.