Material property characterisation method using vibro-acoustic signals

Material play an important role in engineering design and the characterisation of material property has become an essential requirement for their successful application as structural elements. In this paper, the development of material property characterisation method has been presented. Impulsive excitation test has been performed on rectangular bars (medium carbon steel S50C, cast iron FCD 500, stainless steel AISI 304and brass). The transient vibro-acoustic signals generated during the excitation test have been captured using data acquisition system consist of accelerometer-microphone combination. A new method for reducing the noise components from the recorded signals is introduced by an extensive process of a new Z-stem filtering technique. The filtered signals have been analysed using an alternative statistical method known as Integrated Kurtosis-based Algorithm for Z-notch filter (I-kazTM) to determine the pattern of the signal and to estimate the significance differences among those materials. The representation of the experimental curves obtained by the determination of I-kaz coefficient, Z∞ for various impact forces and materials revealed that the results are statistically significant and can be successfully used for determining the correlation between the curves and material property. Implications of this research to material property characterisation will be discussed.