Ultrasound is sound with frequencies greater than 20 kilohertz. This frequency is the approximate upper audible limit of human hearing in healthy young adults. The physical principles of acoustic waves apply to any frequency range, including ultrasound. Ultrasonic devices operate with frequencies from 20 kHz up to several gigahertz.
Welding is a fabrication process that joins materials, usually metals or thermoplastics, primarily by using high temperature to melt the parts together and allow them to cool, causing fusion. Common alternative methods include solvent welding using chemicals to melt materials being bonded without heat, and solid-state welding processes which bond without melting, such as pressure, cold welding, and diffusion bonding.
In materials science, fatigue is the initiation and propagation of cracks in a material due to cyclic loading. Once a fatigue crack has initiated, it grows a small amount with each loading cycle, typically producing striations on some parts of the fracture surface. The crack will continue to grow until it reaches a critical size, which occurs when the stress intensity factor of the crack exceeds the fracture toughness of the material, producing rapid propagation and typically complete fracture of the structure.
Ultrasonic welding is an industrial process whereby high-frequency ultrasonic acoustic vibrations are locally applied to work pieces being held together under pressure to create a solid-state weld. It is commonly used for plastics and metals, and especially for joining dissimilar materials. In ultrasonic welding, there are no connective bolts, nails, soldering materials, or adhesives necessary to bind the materials together. When used to join metals, the temperature stays well below the melting point of the involved materials, preventing any unwanted properties which may arise from high temperature exposure of the metal.
Shot peening is a cold working process used to produce a compressive residual stress layer and modify the mechanical properties of metals and composites. It entails striking a surface with shot with force sufficient to create plastic deformation.
In materials science and solid mechanics, residual stresses are stresses that remain in a solid material after the original cause of the stresses has been removed. Residual stress may be desirable or undesirable. For example, laser peening imparts deep beneficial compressive residual stresses into metal components such as turbine engine fan blades, and it is used in toughened glass to allow for large, thin, crack- and scratch-resistant glass displays on smartphones. However, unintended residual stress in a designed structure may cause it to fail prematurely.
Strapping, also known as bundling and banding, is the process of applying a strap to an item to combine, stabilize, hold, reinforce, or fasten it. A strap may also be referred to as strapping. Strapping is most commonly used in the packaging industry.
Laser peening (LP), or laser shock peening (LSP), is a surface engineering process used to impart beneficial residual stresses in materials. The deep, high-magnitude compressive residual stresses induced by laser peening increase the resistance of materials to surface-related failures, such as fatigue, fretting fatigue, and stress corrosion cracking. Laser shock peening can also be used to strengthen thin sections, harden surfaces, shape or straighten parts, break up hard materials, compact powdered metals and for other applications where high-pressure, short duration shock waves offer desirable processing results.
Weld quality assurance is the use of technological methods and actions to test or assure the quality of welds, and secondarily to confirm the presence, location and coverage of welds. In manufacturing, welds are used to join two or more metal surfaces. Because these connections may encounter loads and fatigue during product lifetime, there is a chance they may fail if not created to proper specification.
An ultrasonic horn is a tapering metal bar commonly used for augmenting the oscillation displacement amplitude provided by an ultrasonic transducer operating at the low end of the ultrasonic frequency spectrum. The device is necessary because the amplitudes provided by the transducers themselves are insufficient for most practical applications of power ultrasound. Another function of the ultrasonic horn is to efficiently transfer the acoustic energy from the ultrasonic transducer into the treated media, which may be solid or liquid. Ultrasonic processing of liquids relies of intense shear forces and extreme local conditions generated by acoustic cavitation.
Drill pipe, is hollow, thin-walled, steel or aluminium alloy piping that is used on drilling rigs. It is hollow to allow drilling fluid to be pumped down the hole through the bit and back up the annulus. It comes in a variety of sizes, strengths, and wall thicknesses, but is typically 27 to 32 feet in length. Longer lengths, up to 45 feet, exist.
Low plasticity burnishing (LPB) cold compresses metal to provide deep, stable surface residual stresses to improve damage tolerance and extend metal fatigue life; mitigating surface damage, including fretting, corrosion pitting, stress corrosion cracking (SCC), and foreign object damage (FOD). Improved fretting fatigue and stress corrosion performance has been documented, even at elevated temperatures where the compression from other metal improvement processes: low stress grinding (LSG) etc. relax. The resulting deep layer of compressive residual stress has also been shown to improve high cycle fatigue (HCF), low cycle fatigue (LCF), and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) performance.
Metal Improvement Company LLC, part of Curtiss-Wright, is a company specializing in metal surface treatments.
The European Federation for Welding, Joining and Cutting (EWF) is an organization dedicated to education, training, qualification and certification in the field of welding and related technologies.
The high-frequency impact treatment or HiFIT – Method is the treatment of welded steel constructions at the weld transition to increase the fatigue strength.
In metallurgy, peening is the process of working a metal's surface to improve its material properties, usually by mechanical means, such as hammer blows, by blasting with shot, focusing light, or in recent years, with water column impacts and cavitation jets. With the notable exception of laser peening, peening is normally a cold work process tending to expand the surface of the cold metal, thus inducing compressive stresses or relieving tensile stresses already present. It can also encourage strain hardening of the surface metal.
Richard Edwin Dolby, OBE, HonDMet, FREng, FIMMM, HonFWeldI is a metallurgist and former Director of Research and Technology at The Welding Institute (TWI) in Cambridge, UK. He is a past President at the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining and a current Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy.
Welding of advanced thermoplastic composites is a beneficial method of joining these materials compared to mechanical fastening and adhesive bonding. Mechanical fastening requires intense labor, and creates stress concentrations, while adhesive bonding requires extensive surface preparation, and long curing cycles. Welding these materials is a cost-effective method of joining concerning preparation and execution, and these materials retain their properties upon cooling, so no post processing is necessary. These materials are widely used in the aerospace industry to reduce weight of a part while keeping strength.
Aluminium alloys are often used due to their high strength-to-weight ratio, corrosion resistance, low cost, high thermal and electrical conductivity. There are a variety of techniques to join aluminium including mechanical fasteners, welding, adhesive bonding, brazing, soldering and friction stir welding (FSW), etc. Various techniques are used based on the cost and strength required for the joint. In addition, process combinations can be performed to provide means for difficult-to-join assemblies and to reduce certain process limitations.
Adhesive bonding is a process by which two members of equal or dissimilar composition are joined. It is used in place of, or to complement other joining methods such mechanical fasting by the use nails, rivets, screws or bolts and many welding processes. The use of adhesives provides many advantages over welding and mechanical fastening in steel construction; however, many challenges still exist that have made the use of adhesives in structural steel components very limited.
