Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1982. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 98-109).

Where the evaluation of the mechanical properties and behaviour of building materials is concerned, there is still not a universally accepted solution for making such measurements. Optical diagnostic techniques are particularly attractive for a non-destructive evaluation of a surface's state and the detection of incipient damage. Non-contact, high precision measurements and full-field of observation are features that can bring enormous advantages in experimental tests.

Defects in Aluminum, Stainless steel and galvanized steel sheets are studied in reflection mode infrared thermography. The effect of material properties, surface finish, heating intensity, heater emission spectra, pixel size and defect size are studied. Contrast is governed by heat quality, emissivity and defect geometry—which follows a logarithmic trend. The diameter detected via infrared thermography is found to be at least 30% larger than the measured diameter and sub-pixel defects can be detected. The use of gradient and Laplacian of temperature is introduced as a means of increasing defect contrast and mitigating heater variation.

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This work has two parts. The first part of the work (in Chapters II, III, IV and V) presents a method for locating the point of impact using acoustic emission techniques.The second part of the work is modeling the ultrasonic fields generated by one and two spherical cavities placed in front of a point focused acoustic lens using the semi-analytical distributed point source method (DPSM).Acoustic emission (AE) refers to the generation of transient elastic waves during the rapid release of energy from localized sources within a material.In this work the acoustic emission has been used for locating the point of impact on anisotropic and homogeneous or non-homogenous flat plates and cylindrical structures. In these cases the wave speed is a function of the angle of propagation. An optimization function is introduced and minimized to get the location of the impact point.This method has been used on a flat (fiber reinforced polymer) plate. The proposed new objective function reduces the amount of time needed for solving the problem and improves the accuracy of prediction. The method is extended to cylindrical structures for which the objective function is written in cylindrical coordinates and the method is tested on a FRP shell.In Chapter IV an alternative method is introduced called the near-field acoustic emission (AE) beamforming method. It has been used to estimate the source locations by using a small array of sensors closely placed in a local region. To validate the effectiveness of the AE beamforming method a series of experiments on a FRP shell are conducted. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can correctly predict the point of impact.The semi-analytical mesh-free technique DPSM is then used to model the ultrasonic field in front of a point focused acoustic lens; anomalies such as cavities are introduced in the medium in front of the acoustic lens and the effect of those cavities are studied. Solution of this problem is necessary to get an idea about when two cavities placed in close proximity can be distinguished by an acoustic lens and when it is not possible.

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