Defect Detection in Pipelines Using Time Reversal of PZT-Based Guided Waves

This paper investigates the use of time reversal processing techniques to compensate for multimodal and dispersive effects in a low-power structural health monitoring (SHM) system for pipelines. The use of time reversal technology as a pitch-catch operation between two PZT-based transducer arrays to illuminate changes caused by damage on a pipe is demonstrated. The response is then propagated backwards through the medium from the same array. How this method provides a metric for classifying the magnitude of damage in a pipe is theoretically and experimentally demonstrated.