Defect Detection and Damage Evaluation of Steel Rods Based on Ultrasonic Guided Waves

Structural defects caused by corrosion and fatigue of steel rods are the main problems in cable-supported engineering. Compared with the traditional ultrasonic detection methods, guided waves have attracted the attention of more and more researchers because of the one-place excitation, long-distance propagation, and wide-range detection. In this paper, the propagation characteristics and laws of the guided wave in the rod are theoretically studied, and the dispersion curve of the rod-shaped structure is deduced. Then, a large number of numerical simulation experiments are carried out for the steel rods with defects using ABAQUS software, and the optimal excitation mode and excitation frequency are selected. Finally, the relationship curve between the evaluation index and the defect depth can be obtained by calculation, which can be used to describe the damage of the steel rod quantitatively.