Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering
- Address:
- Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, Royal College Building, 204 George Street, Glasgow G1 1XW
- Telephone:
- +44 (0)141 548 2886
- Fax:
- +44 (0)141 548 2950
- Contact:
- Professor Tony Gachagan
- Email address:
- ultrasonic-engineering@strath.ac.uk
- Web address:
- www.strath.ac.uk/eee/research/cue/
- Description:
CUE has conducted leading-edge research in the application of ultrasound for UK and overseas governments and a wide range of industrial companies. It is also a member of the UK Research Centre in NDE (RCNDE). In 2010, CUE established a Facility for Innovation and Research in Structural Testing (FIRST) to support feasibility studies, system trials and technology transfer activities in the field of NDE. The equipment available includes precision motion tracking, robotic inspection, ultrasonic array imaging, acoustic microscopy and magnetic NDE.
CUE will meet the needs of ultrasonic end-users through:- Fundamental research programmes, consultancy and feasibility studies
- Transducer and systems design, development and characterisation
- State-of-the-art transducer modelling software, manufacturing and evaluation
- Prototype devices and instrumentation
- Training in all aspects of advanced acoustics
- Long-term partnerships with industry and academic groups.
The activities of the Centre cover the majority of the important topics associated with the application of ultrasonics to solve industrial NDE problems. Current research spans the acoustic spectrum from 30 kHz to 10 MHz, as well as encompassing interrelated areas from physics, through materials technology, instrumentation and computing, to prototype manufacture and application demonstrations. Notable examples of current projects include:- Design and fabrication of ultrasonic transducers and arrays
- Autonomous inspection vehicles for reconfigurable NDE scanning
- Conformable ultrasonic transducers and arrays for NDT and in-situ health monitoring
- Bioacoustics
- Air-coupled ultrasound transducer systems
- Application of wideband coded sequences to maximise system SNR
- Calibration of acoustic emission sensors
- Transducers for high-temperature applications
- Single-crystal transducer arrays
- NDE of dirty parts using thermosonics
- Surface displacement and beam profiling calibration of ultrasonic transducers
- High-performance software for 3D imaging, signal processing, visualisation and intelligent system evaluation of ultrasonic NDT data.
