Characterization of sphere-plane contact loss nonlinearity inside a cylindrical container using nonlinear ultrasound...

Cylindrical containers, such as liquid tanks and pressure vessels, are ubiquitous in storage applications. Traditional lines of non-destructive evaluation (NDE) are mostly focused on the integrity of containers, but studies on solid contents within using external sensors are lacking. In previous work, metrics were developed to estimate the structural integrity of mock-up fuel assemblies inside a lab-scale nuclear dry storage cask. Linear acoustic resonance techniques were shown to be sensitive down to single assembly level. In this work, this problem is further examined by studying contact nonlinearity in a simplified system using Nonlinear Ultrasound Resonance Spectroscopy (NRUS). This system consists of a single layer of identical spheres with varying composition and size evenly distributed at the bottom of a cylindrical aluminum container. The resonance frequency shifts due to varying amplitudes were mostly affected by the total mass of spheres inside, while diameter and composition of spheres played minor roles. A phenomenological model was developed based on the resulting shifts and was studied numerically using finite element simulations. The agreement between simulations and experiments suggests that the contact nonlinearity is predominated by a contact loss mechanism. This NRUS technique may complement linear acoustic techniques for solid cargo NDE inside sealed vessels.