Assessment of glued timber integrity by limited-angle microfocus X-ray computed tomography

Glued timber products have an extensive range of applications in construction. In this work a Microfocus X-ray Computed Tomography method was developed to inspect gluing defects in timber samples and was applied successfully on experimental data. The bonding plane was segmented into glued and non-glued regions and imaged with 5mm resolution. Moreover, the gap topology between timber lamellas was precisely characterised. Alimited-angle reconstruction with anisotropic frame binning together with a specific glue line readout method efficiently filters out undesired wood structure highlighting the information of the adhesive joint. This method imposes limitations on the size of the specimen in only one dimension. The presence and absence of glue could be detected for glue line thicknesses over 50μm and air gaps larger than 150μm could be characterised. Several information reduction approaches were combined in the reconstruction process to implement the assessment of a 100×100mm2 bonding plane in less than 40

Air-coupled ultrasound as an accurate and reproducible method for bonding assessment of glued timber

Glued timber products are widely used in construction; therefore, it is necessary to develop non-destructive bonding quality assessment methods for long-term structural health monitoring. Air-coupled ultrasound (ACU) inspection is a novel technique, with phenomenal improvements in reproducibility compared to traditional contact ultrasonics, unlimited scanning possibilities, and a high potential for delamination detection in wood products. As part of an ongoing project, glued timber samples of 10mm thickness with artificial glue line defects were inspected. A normal through-transmission set-up with 120kHz transducers allowed for successful and accurate imaging of the geometry of glued and non-glued areas in all inspected objects. The influence of wood heterogeneity and the reproducibility of ACU amplitude measurements were analysed in detail, identifying the main sources of variation. Future work is planned for the inspection of more complex glued timber object

Air-coupled ultrasound inspection of glued laminated timber

Abstract A novel air-coupled ultrasound (ACU) 120 kHz normal transmission system enabled successful imaging of bonding and saw cut defects in multilayered glulam beams up to 280 mm in height with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 40 dB. The main wave propagation paths were modeled; quasi-longitudinal and quasi-transverse modes were coupled in each lamella and the sound field was found to be shifted from the insonification axis as a function of the ring angle, leading to interference of wave paths in the receiver and to 15 dB amplitude variability in defect-free glulam. The assessment was improved with spatial processing algorithms that profited from the arbitrary scanning resolution and high reproducibility of ACU. Overlapped averaging reduced in-band noise by 15 dB, amplitude tracking captured only the first incoming oscillation, thus minimizing diffraction around defect regions, and image normalization compensated 6 dB of systematic amplitude variability across the fiber direction. The application of ACU to in situ defect monitoring was demonstrated by using multiparameter difference imaging of measurements of the same sample with and without saw cut defects. The segmentation of the defect geometry was improved significantly and the amplitude variability was reduced by 10 dB. Further work is planned to model additional insonification setups and grain and density heterogeneities.</jats:p