Review of Current Guided Wave Ultrasonic Testing (GWUT) Limitations and Future Directions

Damage is an inevitable occurrence in metallic structures and when unchecked could result in a catastrophic breakdown of structural assets. Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) is adopted in industries for assessment and health inspection of structural assets. Prominent among the NDE techniques is guided wave ultrasonic testing (GWUT). This method is cost-effective and possesses an enormous capability for long-range inspection of corroded structures, detection of sundries of crack and other metallic damage structures at low frequency and energy attenuation. However, the parametric features of the GWUT are affected by structural and environmental operating conditions and result in masking damage signal. Most studies focused on identifying individual damage under varying conditions while combined damage phenomena can coexist in structure and hasten its deterioration. Hence, it is an impending task to study the effect of combined damage on a structure under varying conditions and correlate it with GWUT parametric features. In this respect, this work reviewed the literature on UGWs, damage inspection, severity, temperature influence on the guided wave and parametric characteristics of the inspecting wave. The review is limited to the piezoelectric transduction unit. It was keenly observed that no significant work had been done to correlate the parametric feature of GWUT with combined damage effect under varying conditions. It is therefore proposed to investigate this impending task.