Ultrasonic Measurement System for Detecting Penetration of Boulders by Autocorrelation Analysis

An elastic impact wave method is used as a typical nondestructive test method to investigate the depth of boulder penetration. However, in the elastic impact wave method using, for example, a hammer, the discrimination of the reflection wave produced by minute cracks is difficult. Theoretically, if it becomes possible to input the vibration of an ultrasonic domain into artificial structures, such as a concrete and a boulder, with a strong amplitude, deeper investigation depth compared to the conventional way with a high precision will be attained. In this study, a concrete block, with a known size, which was, unlike boulders, not buried under ground, was used as a test piece in a basic experiment. As analysis methods, a wavelet analysis for checking the reflection wave and an autocorrelation analysis for identifying the time lag of the reflection wave were used. As a result, the reflection wave was detected in a down chirp signal from 50 kHz to 40 kHz.