Dr. Ehsan Dehghan Niri,
Assistant Professor at the New Mexico State University
11:00AM  ~  Monday, January 31, 2022
310 Kelly Hall

What is next in acoustic-based sensing and testing: localization, diagnosis, and prognosis challenges

It is known that mechanical systems and civil infrastructures are subjected to deterioration due to aging, increased load, and natural multi-hazard. Additionally, lack of reliable quality control methods in recently-developed advanced manufacturing processes has reduced the expected reliability of critical components manufactured using these processes. To minimize the maintenance cycle/costs and to increase the operation lifetime of mechanical systems, researchers and practitioners are increasingly interested in improving current nondestructive evaluation (NDE) technologies or building advanced monitoring strategies. NDE methods based on acoustic waves in particular guided ultrasonic waves (GUWs) and nonlinear ultrasound have received significant interest in the past few years, which has led to the development of a variety of systems and signal processing techniques for damage detection in complex structures.  Although systems have been developed, unanswered questions have been posed regarding their reliability and accuracy. The inherent uncertainty in sensor measurements, caused not only by the sensor impreciseness and noise, but also from the ambiguities and inconsistencies present within the environment, and from an inability to distinguish between them, may hamper their reliability in terms of automatic damage detection and characterization.

This presentation will highlight new data processing techniques to enhance accuracy and capabilities of acoustic-based NDE methods for real-time monitoring of infrastructures, robotic inspections, and in-situ quality monitoring of additive manufacturing. Specifically, recent advances and challenges in localization, diagnosis, and prognosis capabilities of acoustic-based sensing and testing systems will be discussed. Finally, it will be shown that near-field auditory systems of a fascinating group of animals that have evolved over the past million years to use self-generated acoustical cues when foraging can help us to pioneer bio-inspired acoustic-sensing and NDE methods to revolutionize infrastructure inspection and manufacturing quality control.

Dr. Dehghan-Niri is currently an assistant professor in the New Mexico State University (NMSU). Before joining NMSU he was a Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) scientist at Materials and Processes Engineering in General Electric (GE Power). He obtained his Ph.D. in structural Engineering at University of Buffalo, in 2014. He is the author of over 28 scientific journal publications, 29 conference publications/presentations, and 14 US and European pending and approved patents. Dr. Dehghan-Niri’s main research interests include bio-inspired acoustic sensing, acoustic-based testing and monitoring methods for inspection of infrastructures and mechanical systems, robotic inspection, and in-situ quality control of advanced manufacturing.

Host: Professor Saied Taheri