Reliable ultrasonic non-destructive testing and asset management of utility wood poles

评估木电杆的状况是制定成功和安全的维护方案的关键一步。电力公司认为木杆是一种高价值和高故障风险的资产。目前，木电杆的状况评估是基于目视检查和使用锤子探测空心部分的声音测试。这些检查测试是主观的;而侵入性测试是昂贵的和侵入性的。公用事业所有者迫切需要一种可靠的技术来执行具有成本效益的木电杆维护和修复计划。该项目的具体目的是开发一种新的方法来评估木电杆的状况。提出了一种稳健的实验和分析方法，它不仅基于最新的超声波检测方法，而且基于最新的概率数据分析技术。超声波测试用于现场测量单个木杆的剩余强度;而统计方法用于评估整个木杆基础设施的可靠性。在超声波检测中，介质特性的变化是从实际记录的数千个信息中的一个信息点进行评估的。因为超声波换能器的响应与介质的实际运动不成正比。一个国家的最先进的纳米激光系统（最近购买，RTI赠款，2011年）将被用来测量实际的输入激励和超声波换能器在木杆产生的介质响应。从实际的输入和输出响应，一个木杆的内部条件将被评估。拟议的项目将通过采用成本效益高的维修和修复业务，降低加拿大发电业的成本。将使用先进的信号处理技术分析由连接到校准带的超声换能器阵列生成的超声数据集，以从波形中提取主要特征;然后将这些特征用于训练一组统计分类算法。从统计分类，在一个木杆的腐烂区域的图像将被显示和剩余强度评估。

An assessment of the condition of wood poles is a critical step in the development of successful and safe maintenance programmes. Electricity companies consider wood poles to be an asset with high value and high risk of failure. Presently, the condition assessment of wood poles is based on visual inspection and sounding tests using a hammer to detect hollow sections. These inspection tests are subjective; whereas, intrusive tests are expensive and intrusive. Utility owners urgently need a reliable technique to perform cost-effective maintenance and rehabilitation programmes of wood poles. This project is specifically aimed at developing a new methodology for the condition assessment of wood poles. A robust experimental and analytical methodology is proposed; which is based not only on the latest ultrasonic testing methods but also on the latest probabilistic data analysis techniques. Ultrasonic tests are used to measure the residual strength of individual wood poles in-situ; whereas statistical methods are used to assess the reliability of the wood-pole infrastructure as a whole. In ultrasonic testing, changes in medium properties are evaluated from a single point of information out of thousands that are actually recorded. Because the response of ultrasonic transducers is not directly proportional to the actual motion of the medium. A state-of-the-art nano-laser system (recently purchased, RTI grant, 2011) will be used to measure the actual input excitations and medium responses generated by ultrasonic transducers in wood poles. From the actual input and output responses, the internal condition of a wood pole will be evaluated. The proposed project will reduce the costs of the Canadian power generation industry by introducing cost-effective maintenance and rehabilitation operations. The ultrasonic data set generated by an array of ultrasonic transducers attached to a calibrated belt will be analyzed using advanced signal processing techniques to extract the main features from the waveforms; these features will then be used to train a set of statistical classification algorithms. From the statistical classification, an image of the decayed areas in a wood pole will be displayed and the remaining strength evaluated.