An ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive trigger serial acquisition method and detection device

Abstract

The present application relates to the technical field of ultrasonic nondestructive testing, and particularly relates to an ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering serial acquisition method and a detection device. The designed ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering technology is aimed at the problem of high redundancy of data collected by the traditional triggering mode. An adaptive data acquisition time window is set through the interaction of the upper computer and the FPGA of the ultrasonic function module. The interface echo of the detected part is used as the data acquisition triggering signal. The starting point of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted according to the interface echo of the detected part. The width of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted according to the sound velocity, thickness and ultrasonic transducer parameters of the detected part. The accurate acquisition of the target signal segment is realized. The effective data throughput processing efficiency is greatly improved. The real-time performance and high speed of the portable ultrasonic detection device are significantly enhanced.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] This invention belongs to the field of ultrasonic nondestructive testing technology, and relates to an ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering serial acquisition method and testing equipment for nondestructive testing of composite materials in the fields of aviation, aerospace, electronics, shipbuilding, weaponry, and metallurgy. Background Technology

[0002] Ultrasonic testing is an important non-destructive testing (NDT) technique, widely used and developed in the field of industrial NDT. Ultrasonic testing utilizes the transit time and signal amplitude of reflected echoes to detect internal defects. With the rapid development of computer technology and integrated circuits, ultrasonic testing equipment is showing a trend towards digitalization, modularization, small size, ease of operation, and easy expansion. Currently, portable ultrasonic testing equipment occupies an important position in ultrasonic NDT of composite materials due to its flexibility and adaptability.

[0003] The main process of ultrasonic testing using portable ultrasonic testing equipment is as follows: First, a high-voltage electric pulse is generated by the pulse generator inside the equipment, which excites the ultrasonic transducer to generate high-frequency ultrasonic waves. When the ultrasonic waves propagate inside the material, they encounter different interfaces (or defects or discontinuities) and generate reflected waves. The reflected waves are received by the ultrasonic transducer and converted into weak analog electrical signals. These weak signals are amplified by the preamplifier unit inside the equipment and converted into digital signals by the analog-to-digital converter unit. The digital signals are transmitted to the main control chip of the equipment or the host computer and then displayed on the screen in real time in the form of an A-scan waveform.

[0004] Due to the anisotropic, non-homogeneous, and multi-layered characteristics of composite materials, ultrasonic testing equipment for composite materials faces more complex and ambiguous ultrasonic signals compared to isotropic metallic materials. Finding clear defect reflections from massive amounts of raw data—that is, real-time acquisition and processing of high-frequency ultrasonic signals—is a key design challenge and technical difficulty for portable ultrasonic testing equipment. To balance the penetration depth and detection resolution of ultrasonic testing of composite materials, an ultrasonic testing frequency range of 1 MHz to 15 MHz is typically chosen. According to the Nyquist sampling theorem, the sampling frequency must be at least twice the ultrasonic testing frequency (in practice, it is usually 5-10 times). This means the sampling frequency needs to reach 50 MS / s. Taking an 8-bit ADC as an example, this equates to 50 million samples per second or even higher, with a raw data rate of 47.68 MB / s. Such a high sampling frequency generates massive amounts of raw data, which needs to be transmitted continuously in real-time from the acquisition front end through signal amplification and analog-to-digital conversion units to the device's main control chip or host computer. This places a severe test on the device's bus data throughput, storage space, and processing power.

[0005] To meet the real-time and high-speed requirements of high-frequency ultrasonic signals in ultrasonic testing, while also considering power consumption and ease of operation, portable ultrasonic testing equipment needs to strike a balance between many mutually restrictive factors, such as extremely high sampling rates, sufficient detection resolution and thickness penetration, real-time throughput and processing of massive amounts of data, and limited power consumption and equipment space. Currently, there are three main architectures for portable ultrasonic testing equipment: First, a SoC integrated board architecture based on ADC+FPGA+ARM / DSP, where the ADC is responsible for analog signal acquisition and digital-to-analog conversion from the ultrasonic transducer, the FPGA is responsible for real-time processing of raw data, and the ARM / DSP is responsible for logic control, ultrasonic pattern display, and interface interaction. Each unit is connected via a dedicated data link through PCB routing. Second, a PCIe-based industrial computer architecture, requiring the ultrasonic board to be inserted into a fixed PCIe slot in the industrial computer for data transmission. The industrial computer uses a general-purpose processor and standardized hardware interfaces to implement ultrasonic testing functions via software. Third, an industrial computer architecture based on a gigabit Ethernet interface, where the ultrasonic board is responsible for data acquisition, and the industrial computer is responsible for ultrasonic data processing and display. The two are physically separated and connected and communicate via gigabit Ethernet.

[0006] Existing technologies have certain shortcomings and limitations in specific fields: (1) The SoC integrated board architecture adopts a highly integrated design concept. Each functional unit is connected through a parallel bus to meet the real-time and high-speed requirements of ultrasonic testing equipment for high-frequency ultrasonic signals. However, this type of testing equipment is highly specialized, the system is completely customized, the hardware functions are fixed at the factory and deeply coupled, and a change in one part affects the whole. It usually does not have the secondary development capabilities of ultrasonic testing imaging processing, signal analysis and other software. The initial development cost is high, and it cannot be upgraded or replaced by unit in the later stage. When encountering a fault, the repair cost is high, and it usually requires the replacement of the entire hardware board. On the other hand, since the SoC integrated board architecture also integrates the ultrasonic high voltage pulse excitation unit, the 100-volt ultrasonic high voltage pulse excitation signal will interfere with the mV ultrasonic testing signal, and a special electromagnetic shielding layer needs to be established.

[0007] (2) The construction of ultrasonic testing equipment based on PCIe industrial computer architecture is limited by physical slots. Ultrasonic acquisition cards usually need to occupy a ×8 or ×16 PCIe bus slot on the industrial computer motherboard. Moreover, the large size of ultrasonic acquisition cards can easily cause spatial interference with the cards in adjacent PCIe slots. Secondly, deploying high-power ultrasonic acquisition cards in a closed chassis space will generate heat accumulation, which may lead to heat dissipation difficulties for portable ultrasonic testing equipment. Thirdly, the PCIe snap-on connection method mainly relies on the mechanical connection between the gold fingers and the springs in the slot, and does not support hot-swapping. Most ultrasonic testing host computer software does not have the processing logic for the sudden removal or addition of ultrasonic acquisition cards. Considering the vibration, dust, and humidity of the working environment of portable ultrasonic testing equipment, loose card slots can easily lead to electrical short circuits, which may cause blue screens and software crashes, or even damage to expensive ultrasonic cards or host computer motherboards. Fourthly, based on this architecture, it is necessary to write hardware-level dedicated drivers for different operating systems. With the upgrading of operating systems, the new operating system may be completely incompatible with the old drivers, resulting in the inability to recognize the PCIe ultrasonic cards. Therefore, portable ultrasonic testing equipment based on PCIe industrial control computer architecture sacrifices portability and versatility in order to achieve real-time high-speed data acquisition and transmission performance. Such equipment is usually large in size, consumes a lot of power, has poor mobile reliability, and has poor iterative update capability.

[0008] (3) The industrial control computer architecture based on gigabit Ethernet interface is mainly used in split / distributed ultrasonic acquisition systems. The ultrasonic signal acquisition front-end (ultrasonic board) and data processing and display (industrial control host computer) are physically separated and data is transmitted through a 10-gigabit Ethernet connection, which is more suitable for networked serial transmission in distributed systems. This architecture is less used in portable ultrasonic testing equipment, mainly because physical separation leads to a bulky portable equipment system. The ultrasonic board only needs to transmit data and requires additional power supply support. Therefore, portable ultrasonic testing equipment implemented with this architecture needs to carry ultrasonic board, power module, industrial control computer and multiple connecting cables at the same time, making it difficult to achieve ideal integrated portability. Networked data transmission is affected by network protocol, resulting in high latency and jitter. The Ethernet protocol has high overhead, and for the real-time and high-speed requirements of high-frequency ultrasonic signals, the actual effective data throughput may be far lower than the theoretical value.

[0009] (4) One of the technical challenges in designing portable ultrasonic testing based on the above three architectures is the implementation of data sampling triggering. The SoC integrated board architecture and PCIe industrial control computer architecture directly transmit the high-voltage excitation pulse as the trigger signal to the FPGA or ARM / DSP core. The Ethernet interface architecture usually provides a dedicated external trigger interface on the board. The external trigger signal is packaged together with the detection data and transmitted to the host computer through the network. Due to the influence of network latency, its accuracy is lower than that of direct triggering within the board. This traditional triggering method uses the excitation pulse as the starting point of data acquisition time. The acquisition time window covers the time transition from the excitation pulse to the detected interface (twice the sound path), resulting in data redundancy and wasting valuable transmission bandwidth, storage space and processing power. Summary of the Invention

[0010] This invention aims to provide an adaptive triggering acquisition method and testing device for ultrasonic pulse signals. Addressing the need for both penetration capability and detection resolution in ultrasonic nondestructive testing of composite materials, this invention proposes a technical solution combining adaptive triggering of ultrasonic pulse signals with serial acquisition of detection data. Adaptive triggering is achieved by capturing echoes from the interface of the tested part. The data transmission interface follows the USB high-speed bus communication protocol, making it particularly suitable for real-time, high-speed acquisition of high-frequency ultrasonic pulse signals in portable ultrasonic testing equipment for composite materials.

[0011] In a first aspect, the present invention provides an adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals, which is implemented through a portable ultrasonic testing device; the portable testing device includes an ultrasonic function module and a host computer main control module, and the two modules are connected through a universal USB interface. The adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals includes: The host computer main control module sends instructions to the ultrasonic function module according to the preset pulse repetition frequency. The ultrasonic function module generates periodic high-voltage excitation pulses and a hardware blanking signal. The hardware blanking signal actively shuts down the data acquisition channel during the high-voltage excitation pulse transmission. High-voltage excitation pulses excite ultrasonic transducers to generate ultrasonic waves. The ultrasonic waves generate interface echoes at the interface of the part being inspected and defect echoes at the internal defects. The ultrasonic signals received by the ultrasonic transducer contain only interface echoes and defect echoes. Using the interface echo of the inspected part as the trigger reference, a data acquisition time window is dynamically calculated and opened. The starting point of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted according to the time base of the interface echo of the inspected part, and the width of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted according to the sound velocity, thickness and ultrasonic transducer parameters of the inspected part, thereby achieving accurate acquisition of the target signal segment containing only ultrasonic interface echo and defect echo.

[0012] Furthermore, the host computer main control module includes a USB communication port and ultrasonic detection host computer software; the host computer main control module sends instructions to the ultrasonic function module through the USB communication port.

[0013] Furthermore, the ultrasonic functional module includes an FPGA logic unit, a high-voltage pulse excitation unit, an analog signal transmission unit, and an analog signal receiving unit; After receiving the instruction, the FPGA logic unit generates a digital pulse control signal with adjustable pulse width, which generates a high-voltage pulse excitation signal via the high-voltage pulse excitation unit. The high-voltage pulse excitation signal is then transmitted to the external ultrasonic transducer via the analog signal transmitting unit. The digital pulse control signal emitted by the FPGA logic unit also serves as a control signal blanking gate, shutting down the ultrasonic signal link at the same time as stimulating the high-voltage pulse excitation unit, so that the high-voltage pulse excitation signal will not enter the analog signal receiving unit.

[0014] Furthermore, the ultrasound function module also includes a signal amplification unit, an analog-to-digital conversion unit, and a USB communication unit; The analog signal receiving unit adaptively triggers the data acquisition start point based on the time domain position of the echo from the interface of the tested part, and dynamically adjusts the width of the adaptive trigger window based on the sound velocity, thickness, and ultrasonic transducer parameters of the tested part. After the ultrasonic analog signal is clipped by the adaptive trigger window, only the effective signal segment is retained. This effective signal segment is converted into digital ultrasonic data by the signal amplification unit and the analog-to-digital conversion unit, and finally transmitted to the host computer main control module through the data channel of the USB communication unit.

[0015] Furthermore, the ultrasonic testing host computer software creates a user interface thread; the user interface thread is responsible for setting ultrasonic acquisition parameters, including sampling frequency, storage depth, amplitude range, and triggering method.

[0016] Furthermore, the ultrasonic testing host computer software also creates an ultrasonic pulse serial channel group management thread; When the ultrasound function module is connected to the USB communication port of the host computer main control module, the ultrasound pulse serial channel group management thread creates an independently running USB serial channel thread for each ultrasound detection channel and assigns it an independent data pipeline.

[0017] Furthermore, the ultrasonic testing host computer software also creates a serial data acquisition thread; The USB serial channel thread is responsible for continuously reading ultrasound detection data from the data buffer of the ultrasound function module and writing it into the corresponding data pipe, while the detection data serial acquisition thread sends the dataReady signal.

[0018] Furthermore, the ultrasonic detection host computer software also creates an ultrasonic wave shape display thread; After receiving the dataReady signal, the ultrasonic waveform display thread reads the ultrasonic detection data in the data pipeline and displays the ultrasonic A-Scan waveform in real time.

[0019] Furthermore, the USB serial channel thread utilizes the amplitude, single cycle, and pulse width of the upper interface echo in the A-Scan signal detected by the ultrasonic transducer. It employs an adaptive triggering method that combines the upper and lower edges with pulse time transit to locate the ultrasonic feature signal in real time and sample it within the gated range. Invalid signals outside the gated range are directly discarded.

[0020] Secondly, the present invention also provides a portable testing device, including an ultrasonic function module and a host computer main control module, the two modules being connected via a universal USB interface; The host computer main control module includes a USB communication port and ultrasonic detection host computer software. The ultrasonic function module includes an FPGA logic unit, a high-voltage pulse excitation unit, an analog signal transmission unit, an analog signal receiving unit, a signal amplification unit, an analog-to-digital conversion unit, and a USB communication unit. The portable detection device is used to implement the ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering serial acquisition method described above.

[0021] The above-described technical solution of the present invention has the following advantages: The ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering serial acquisition method and detection device provided by this invention adopts a modular design for the ultrasonic signal acquisition front end, integrating a high-voltage short-time nanosecond-level pulse excitation unit, an ultrasonic signal amplification unit, an analog-to-digital conversion unit, and a USB communication unit into a single module. This module is functionally decoupled and physically isolated from the industrial control host computer, and ultrasonic detection data transmission is achieved through a USB interface instead of the SoC parallel bus, PCIe bus, and Ethernet bus. It supports hot-swapping and plug-and-play, greatly simplifying the connection complexity of portable ultrasonic testing. The designed ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering technology addresses the problem of high data redundancy in traditional triggering methods. An adaptive data acquisition time window is set through interaction between the host computer and the FPGA of the ultrasonic function module. The echo from the interface of the inspected part serves as the data acquisition trigger signal. The starting point of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted based on the echo from the inspected part's interface, and the width of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted based on the sound velocity, thickness, and ultrasonic transducer parameters of the inspected part. This achieves accurate acquisition of the target signal segment, significantly improving the effective data throughput processing efficiency and greatly enhancing the real-time performance and high speed of the portable ultrasonic testing device. Attached Figure Description

[0022] To more clearly illustrate the specific embodiments of the present invention or the technical solutions in the prior art, the drawings used in the description of the specific embodiments or the prior art will be briefly introduced below. Obviously, the drawings described below are some embodiments of the present invention. For those skilled in the art, other drawings can be obtained from these drawings without creative effort.

[0023] Figure 1 A schematic diagram of the functional modules of the portable testing device provided in an embodiment of the present invention; Figure 2 This is a schematic diagram illustrating the correspondence between the time transit of an ultrasonic pulse signal and the effective sampling data provided in an embodiment of the present invention. Figure 3 This is a schematic diagram of the multi-threaded processing architecture for serial acquisition of ultrasonic pulses provided in an embodiment of the present invention. Detailed Implementation

[0024] In the following description, specific details such as particular system architectures and techniques are set forth for illustrative purposes and not for limitation, in order to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments of the invention. However, those skilled in the art will understand that the invention can be implemented in other embodiments without these specific details. In other instances, detailed descriptions of well-known systems, devices, circuits, and methods are omitted so as not to obscure the description of the invention with unnecessary detail.

[0025] It should be understood that, when used in this specification and the appended claims, the term "comprising" indicates the presence of the described features, integrals, steps, operations, elements and / or components, but does not exclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, integrals, steps, operations, elements, components and / or collections thereof.

[0026] Furthermore, in the description of this invention and the appended claims, the terms "first," "second," "third," etc., are used only to distinguish descriptions and should not be construed as indicating or implying relative importance.

[0027] References to "one embodiment" or "some embodiments" as described in this specification mean that one or more embodiments of the invention include a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with that embodiment. Therefore, the phrases "in one embodiment," "in some embodiments," "in other embodiments," "in still other embodiments," etc., appearing in different parts of this specification do not necessarily refer to the same embodiment, but rather mean "one or more, but not all, embodiments," unless otherwise specifically emphasized. The terms "comprising," "including," "having," and variations thereof mean "including but not limited to," unless otherwise specifically emphasized. "A plurality" means "two or more."

[0028] The specific embodiments of the present invention will be described in further detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and examples. The following examples are for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to limit the scope of the invention.

[0029] This invention provides an adaptive triggering serial acquisition method and detection device for ultrasonic pulse signals. The portable ultrasonic testing device is functionally divided into a physically isolated and functionally decoupled ultrasonic functional module and a host computer main control module. The two modules are connected via a universal USB interface, and inter-module command communication and data transmission are all achieved through this single physical data link. The host computer sends commands to the ultrasonic functional module according to a preset pulse repetition frequency (PRF). The FPGA within the ultrasonic functional module generates periodic high-voltage excitation pulses. At the same time as the high-voltage excitation pulses are generated, the FPGA synchronously generates a hardware blanking signal. This signal can actively shut down the data acquisition channel during the high-voltage pulse transmission, thereby physically isolating the high-voltage pulses from interfering with the mV-level sensitive circuitry at the sampling front end. On the other hand, the high-voltage excitation pulses are transmitted to the ultrasonic transducer via an ultrasonic transmitting circuit, exciting the transducer to generate ultrasonic waves. The ultrasonic waves generate interface echoes at the interface of the inspected part and defect echoes at internal defects. Because the FPGA actively blocks the high-voltage excitation pulse signal, only interface echoes and defect echoes exist in the ultrasonic signals received by the ultrasonic transducer.

[0030] The system employs an adaptive triggering mode based on ultrasonic pulse signals. Using the interface echo of the inspected part as the trigger reference, it dynamically calculates and opens a data acquisition time window. The starting point of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted according to the time base of the interface echo of the inspected part, and the width of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted according to the sound velocity, thickness, and ultrasonic transducer parameters of the inspected part. This achieves precise acquisition of the target signal segment containing only valid information (ultrasonic interface echo and defect echo, etc.). This invention significantly reduces the amount of data acquired in a single acquisition. Under limited USB bandwidth, storage space, and processing power, it effectively improves the high-frequency ultrasonic signal processing capability of portable ultrasonic testing equipment, while simultaneously meeting the comprehensive requirements of portable ultrasonic testing equipment for real-time performance, high speed, low power consumption, and ease of use.

[0031] like Figure 1As shown, the portable ultrasonic testing device is functionally divided into a host computer main control module 1 and an ultrasonic function module 2. The host computer main control module 1 includes a USB communication port and ultrasonic testing host computer software. The ultrasonic function module 2 includes an FPGA logic unit, a high-voltage pulse excitation unit, an analog signal transmitting unit, an analog signal receiving unit, a signal amplification unit, an analog-to-digital conversion unit, and a USB communication unit. First, the host computer main control module 1 sends a command to the ultrasonic function module 2 through the USB communication port. After receiving the command, the FPGA logic unit generates a digital pulse control signal 3 with adjustable pulse width. This signal is then used by the high-voltage pulse excitation unit to generate a high-voltage pulse excitation signal 4. The peak voltage of the high-voltage pulse excitation signal 4 can reach over 100 V, and the minimum pulse width is 30 ns. The high-voltage pulse excitation signal 4 is transmitted to the external ultrasonic transducer via the analog signal transmitting unit.

[0032] The digital pulse control signal 3 emitted by the FPGA logic unit also serves as the control signal blanking gate 5, shutting down the ultrasonic signal link at the same time as activating the high-voltage pulse excitation unit, preventing the high-voltage pulse excitation signal from entering the analog signal receiving unit. The analog signal receiving unit can adaptively trigger the data acquisition start point based on the time-domain position of the echo 6 from the interface of the inspected part, and dynamically adjust the width of the adaptive trigger window 7 based on the sound velocity, thickness, and ultrasonic transducer parameters of the inspected part. After being clipped by the adaptive trigger window 7, only the effective signal segment of the ultrasonic analog signal is retained. This effective signal segment is converted into digitized ultrasonic data by the signal amplification unit and the analog-to-digital conversion unit, and finally transmitted to the host computer main control module via the data channel of the USB communication unit.

[0033] like Figure 2As shown, a portable ultrasonic testing device, paired with a water-bag-type coupled ultrasonic transducer 8, is used to test a composite laminate 9. Without the adaptive triggering method for ultrasonic pulse signals, within each pulse repetition frequency period, four types of pulse signals typically appear sequentially on the ultrasonic signal link: the excitation echo 10 from the high-voltage excitation pulse at the ultrasonic transducer wafer, the upper interface echo 11 of the tested part, the lower interface echo 12 of the tested part, and the defect echo 13 that may exist inside the part. The time transition between the excitation echo 10 and the upper interface echo 11 corresponds to the time transit of ultrasonic propagation in the water bag; this sampling data segment 14 does not contribute to the actual detection but instead consumes hardware resources and sampling length. The time transition between the upper interface echo 11 and the lower interface echo 12 corresponds to the time transit of ultrasonic propagation inside the tested part; this sampling data segment 15 represents the area containing effective detection information. The ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering method described in this invention can automatically blank the high-voltage pulse excitation echo 10, take the upper interface echo 11 of the tested part as the adaptive triggering starting point, and dynamically adjust the signal sampling window based on the time transit between the upper interface echo 11 and the lower interface echo 12 of the tested part, effectively improving sampling efficiency and signal processing speed.

[0034] like Figure 3 As shown, the portable ultrasound testing device employs a highly efficient multi-threaded processing architecture. The host computer software actively creates five sub-threads: a user interface thread, an ultrasound waveform display thread, a serial acquisition thread for test data, a main control command communication thread, and an ultrasound pulse serial channel group management thread. The user interface thread is responsible for setting ultrasound acquisition parameters, including sampling frequency, storage depth, amplitude range, and triggering method. When the ultrasound function module is connected to the host computer's main control module's USB communication port, the ultrasound pulse serial channel group management thread creates an independently running USB serial channel thread for each ultrasound test channel and assigns it an independent data pipe. The USB serial channel thread continuously reads ultrasound test data from the ultrasound function module's data buffer and writes it to the corresponding data pipe. Simultaneously, the serial acquisition thread sends a dataReady signal. Upon receiving this dataReady signal, the ultrasound waveform display thread reads the ultrasound test data from the data pipe and displays the ultrasound A-Scan waveform in real time.

[0035] The USB serial channel thread utilizes the amplitude, single cycle, and pulse width characteristics of the upper interface echo 11 from the A-Scan signal detected by the ultrasonic transducer. It employs an adaptive triggering method combining upper and lower edge transitions with pulse time transit to locate ultrasonic characteristic signals in real time and sample within a gated range. Invalid signals outside the gated range are directly discarded, significantly improving the acquisition and processing speed of valid data. The serial acquisition method described in this invention fully leverages the characteristics of USB tree topology expansion. When multiple ultrasonic functional modules are connected to the USB communication interface of the host computer main control module via a USB Hub, they can share the same data pipeline. Although the data rate of the ultrasonic functional modules is less than the USB channel bandwidth and power supply capacity, the adaptive triggering of the ultrasonic pulse signal described in this invention significantly reduces the amount of data per frame, thus ensuring the real-time and high-speed performance of the multi-channel ultrasonic functional modules.

[0036] This invention has the following characteristics: (1) The designed ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering technology addresses the problem of high data redundancy in traditional triggering methods. By interacting with the FPGA of the ultrasonic function module, an adaptive data acquisition time window is set. The echo of the interface of the tested part is used as the data acquisition trigger signal. The starting point of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted according to the echo of the interface of the tested part. The width of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted according to the sound velocity, thickness and ultrasonic transducer parameters of the tested part. This achieves accurate acquisition of the target signal segment, greatly improves the efficiency of effective data throughput processing, and significantly enhances the real-time performance and high speed of portable ultrasonic testing equipment.

[0037] (2) The designed adaptive triggering technology for ultrasonic pulse signals takes into account the high performance and low cost requirements of portable ultrasonic testing equipment. By capturing interface echoes at uncertain locations, it eliminates invalid data redundancy from the source. Through adaptive and precise acquisition, it reduces the burden on valuable data bandwidth resources and lowers the resource requirements of portable ultrasonic testing equipment for storage space and processing power. It is particularly suitable for the lightweight and low cost of portable ultrasonic testing equipment.

[0038] (3) The designed adaptive triggering technology for ultrasonic pulse signals abandons the direct triggering acquisition method of high-voltage excitation pulses. Instead, it uses the host computer software to instruct the FPGA in the ultrasonic unit to generate periodic high-voltage excitation pulses according to the preset pulse repetition frequency (PRF). At the same time as the excitation pulse is generated, the FPGA synchronously activates a hardware blanking signal to actively shut down the acquisition channel during the high-voltage pulse transmission. This design achieves hardware isolation between the high-voltage excitation circuit and the mV-level sensitive acquisition circuit from the physical link, fundamentally avoiding the interference of high-voltage excitation pulses on the mV-level sensitive data acquisition and processing circuit.

[0039] (4) The designed ultrasonic pulse signal serial acquisition technology connects the host computer main control module and the ultrasonic function module point-to-point through the USB interface, realizing modular functional decoupling and physical isolation. The ultrasonic pulse signal is transmitted in a serial manner, which reduces the design difficulty and overall cost of portable ultrasonic testing equipment while meeting the high-speed and real-time requirements of ultrasonic testing equipment.

[0040] (5) The designed ultrasonic pulse signal serial acquisition technology fully leverages the convenience advantages of the USB interface's "plug and play" and "hot-swappable" features. "Plug and play" greatly reduces the deployment difficulty of portable ultrasonic testing equipment. The ultrasonic function module is directly powered by the USB bus, eliminating the need for an external power adapter and achieving integrated data and power supply. "Hot-swappable" allows for safe plugging and unplugging during equipment testing and operation. Loosening of a single interface will not cause equipment downtime or host computer failure, thereby significantly improving the reliability of the testing equipment and the flexibility of on-site use.

[0041] (6) The designed ultrasonic pulse signal serial acquisition technology fully leverages the "driverless" and "cross-platform" universality advantages of the USB interface. Thanks to the operating system's native support for the USB protocol, the same portable ultrasonic testing device can be seamlessly used on Windows, Linux, macOS and various domestic operating systems without the need to write specific drivers. It also completely solves the hardware compatibility problem caused by operating system upgrades, ensuring the long-term availability and maintenance convenience of the device.

[0042] (7) The designed portable ultrasonic testing equipment significantly reduces the demand for host computer resources. It adopts a low-cost universal USB serial port connection. The interface and cable are mature and standardized mass consumer products. It does not require the host computer motherboard to provide dedicated slot space or support complex network topology. It is easy to realize the portability and miniaturization of the testing equipment. The portable ultrasonic testing equipment is inexpensive, compact in structure, reliable in connection and easy to maintain.

[0043] (8) The host computer software of the portable ultrasound testing device adopts an efficient multi-threaded processing architecture. By assigning tasks such as adaptive triggering of ultrasound pulse signals, serial acquisition of detection data, display of ultrasound A-scan waveform, and user interaction interface to independent parallel threads, the computing power and performance limits of the embedded host computer's multi-core CPU are squeezed to achieve parallel acquisition, synchronous processing and real-time display, which greatly improves the refresh rate of ultrasound A-scan waveform display and ensures the high response speed of the portable ultrasound testing device.

[0044] (9) The constructed portable ultrasound testing device can be expanded to a multi-channel ultrasound synchronous acquisition mode. In the multi-channel ultrasound acquisition mode, each ultrasound functional module's USB communication unit has a unique device descriptor pre-set in its EEPROM. When multiple ultrasound functional modules are connected to different USB ports of the host computer, the host computer will actively enumerate and identify the descriptors of each module, and then dynamically allocate an independent data transmission channel for each ultrasound module. The entire process is supported by the operating system's native USB protocol stack, without the need for additional driver development or modification of the host computer's testing program. Theoretically, it supports up to 127 channels, but the actual number is limited by the physical USB ports and power supply. It can also be expanded through a USB Hub, which can flexibly increase the number of connected ultrasound functional modules, making the portable ultrasound testing device highly scalable.

[0045] The following is a description through specific embodiments.

[0046] Example The ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering serial acquisition method described in this invention was used to inspect a 20mm thick carbon fiber reinforced resin matrix composite plate. A portable ultrasonic testing device was used with a 40mm focal length water-filled coupled ultrasonic transducer, and contact reflection was employed for detection at a selected frequency of 5MHz. The velocity of sound in water is known to be 1450m / s, while in carbon fiber reinforced resin matrix composites it is approximately 3000m / s. The sampling frequency of the portable ultrasonic testing device is 80MHz. The time required for ultrasonic waves to propagate in water is approximately 55µs, corresponding to 4413 sampling data points. The time required for propagation in the composite material is approximately 13µs, corresponding to 1066 sampling data points. Therefore, the target signal segment containing effective information (interface echoes and defect echoes, etc.) accounts for approximately 20% of the total acquisition points. By employing the ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering serial acquisition method described in this invention, the amount of data acquired in a single acquisition is reduced by 80%, the bandwidth utilization is theoretically increased by 4 times, and the ultrasonic A-scan waveform refresh rate of portable ultrasonic testing equipment can reach up to 60 frames / s, significantly enhancing the high speed and real-time performance of ultrasonic data acquisition in portable testing equipment.

[0047] The advancement of this invention is to propose an ultrasonic pulse signal acquisition and transmission method based on "adaptive triggering" and "serial acquisition" for portable ultrasonic testing equipment.

[0048] The advantages and beneficial effects of this invention are as follows: (1) The method described in this invention can use the interface echo of the tested part as a trigger signal to adaptively adjust the starting point and width of the sampling time window, which greatly improves the efficiency of effective data throughput processing and significantly enhances the real-time performance and high speed of portable ultrasonic testing equipment. (2) The method described in this invention can eliminate invalid data redundancy from the source, reduce the resource requirements of portable ultrasonic testing equipment for data bandwidth, storage space and processing power, and is conducive to the lightweight and low cost of portable ultrasonic testing equipment; (3) The method described in this invention can achieve hardware blanking of the high voltage excitation pulse, which on the one hand avoids the acquisition unit from misjudging the high voltage excitation pulse as a trigger signal, and on the other hand achieves hardware isolation between the high voltage excitation circuit and the mV-level sensitive acquisition circuit from the physical link. (4) The modular functional design of the portable ultrasonic testing equipment is realized by using the method described in this invention. The host computer main control module and the ultrasonic function module are connected through the USB serial interface, which not only ensures the high speed and real-time performance of the portable ultrasonic testing equipment, but also reduces the design difficulty and overall cost of the portable ultrasonic testing equipment. (5) The method described in this invention enables the "plug-and-play" and "hot-swappable" ultrasonic functional modules, which greatly reduces the difficulty of deploying portable ultrasonic testing equipment and increases the stability and reliability of the equipment during operation. (6) The serial acquisition of ultrasonic pulse signals achieved by the method described in this invention has the advantages of being "driverless" and "cross-platform". The same portable ultrasonic testing device can be used seamlessly on Windows, Linux, macOS and various domestic operating systems without the need to write drivers, thereby avoiding hardware compatibility issues caused by operating system upgrades and ensuring the long-term availability and maintenance convenience of the device. (7) The portable ultrasonic testing device designed using the method described in this invention adopts a low-cost universal USB serial port connection. The interface and cable are mature and standardized mass consumer products, which can easily realize the portability and miniaturization of the testing device. It is low in cost, compact in structure, reliable in connection and easy to maintain. (8) The ultrasonic testing equipment host computer software constructed using the method described in this invention adopts an efficient multi-threaded processing architecture, which can fully utilize the computing resources and performance limits of the embedded host computer to achieve parallel acquisition, synchronous processing and real-time display, greatly improving the refresh rate of the ultrasonic A-scan display waveform and ensuring the high response speed of the portable ultrasonic testing equipment.

[0049] (9) The portable ultrasound testing device constructed using the method described in this invention can be expanded into a multi-channel ultrasound synchronous acquisition mode. It can be expanded through a USB tree topology to flexibly increase the number of ultrasound function modules, thus giving the portable ultrasound testing device powerful and flexible scalability.

[0050] It should be noted that the various embodiments in this specification are described in a progressive manner, and the same or similar parts between the various embodiments can be referred to mutually. Each embodiment focuses on describing the differences from other embodiments. The present invention is not limited to the specific structures described above and shown in the figures. Furthermore, for the sake of brevity, detailed descriptions of known methods and techniques are omitted here.

[0051] The above-described embodiments are only used to illustrate the technical solutions of the present invention, and are not intended to limit it. Although the present invention has been described in detail with reference to the foregoing embodiments, those skilled in the art should understand that modifications can still be made to the technical solutions described in the foregoing embodiments, or equivalent substitutions can be made to some of the technical features. Such modifications or substitutions do not cause the essence of the corresponding technical solutions to deviate from the spirit and scope of the technical solutions of the embodiments of the present invention, and should all be included within the protection scope of the present invention.

Claims

1. A method for adaptive triggering serial acquisition of ultrasonic pulse signals, characterized in that, This is achieved using a portable ultrasonic testing device; the portable testing device includes an ultrasonic function module and a host computer main control module, and the two modules are connected through a universal USB interface. The adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals includes: The host computer main control module sends instructions to the ultrasonic function module according to the preset pulse repetition frequency. The ultrasonic function module generates periodic high-voltage excitation pulses and a hardware blanking signal. The hardware blanking signal actively shuts down the data acquisition channel during the high-voltage excitation pulse transmission. High-voltage excitation pulses excite ultrasonic transducers to generate ultrasonic waves. The ultrasonic waves generate interface echoes at the interface of the part being inspected and defect echoes at the internal defects. The ultrasonic signals received by the ultrasonic transducer contain only interface echoes and defect echoes. Using the interface echo of the inspected part as the trigger reference, a data acquisition time window is dynamically calculated and opened. The starting point of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted according to the time base of the interface echo of the inspected part, and the width of the sampling time window is dynamically adjusted according to the sound velocity, thickness and ultrasonic transducer parameters of the inspected part, thereby achieving accurate acquisition of the target signal segment containing only ultrasonic interface echo and defect echo.

2. The adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals as described in claim 1, characterized in that, The host computer main control module includes a USB communication port and ultrasonic detection host computer software; the host computer main control module sends instructions to the ultrasonic function module through the USB communication port.

3. The adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals as described in claim 1, characterized in that, The ultrasonic functional module includes an FPGA logic unit, a high-voltage pulse excitation unit, an analog signal transmission unit, and an analog signal receiving unit; After receiving the instruction, the FPGA logic unit generates a digital pulse control signal with adjustable pulse width, which generates a high-voltage pulse excitation signal via the high-voltage pulse excitation unit. The high-voltage pulse excitation signal is then transmitted to the external ultrasonic transducer via the analog signal transmitting unit. The digital pulse control signal emitted by the FPGA logic unit also serves as a control signal blanking gate, shutting down the ultrasonic signal link at the same time as stimulating the high-voltage pulse excitation unit, so that the high-voltage pulse excitation signal will not enter the analog signal receiving unit.

4. The adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals as described in claim 3, characterized in that, The ultrasound function module also includes a signal amplification unit, an analog-to-digital conversion unit, and a USB communication unit; The analog signal receiving unit adaptively triggers the data acquisition start point based on the time domain position of the echo from the interface of the tested part, and dynamically adjusts the width of the adaptive trigger window based on the sound velocity, thickness, and ultrasonic transducer parameters of the tested part. After the ultrasonic analog signal is clipped by the adaptive trigger window, only the effective signal segment is retained. This effective signal segment is converted into digital ultrasonic data by the signal amplification unit and the analog-to-digital conversion unit, and finally transmitted to the host computer main control module through the data channel of the USB communication unit.

5. The adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals as described in claim 2, characterized in that, The ultrasonic testing host computer software creates a user interface thread; the user interface thread is responsible for setting ultrasonic acquisition parameters, including sampling frequency, storage depth, amplitude range, and triggering method.

6. The adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals as described in claim 2, characterized in that, The ultrasonic testing host computer software also creates an ultrasonic pulse serial channel group management thread. When the ultrasound function module is connected to the USB communication port of the host computer main control module, the ultrasound pulse serial channel group management thread creates an independently running USB serial channel thread for each ultrasound detection channel and assigns it an independent data pipeline.

7. The adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals as described in claim 6, characterized in that, The ultrasonic testing host computer software also creates a serial data acquisition thread for the test data. The USB serial channel thread is responsible for continuously reading ultrasound detection data from the data buffer of the ultrasound function module and writing it into the corresponding data pipe, while the detection data serial acquisition thread sends the dataReady signal.

8. The adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals as described in claim 7, characterized in that, The ultrasonic testing host computer software also creates an ultrasonic shape display thread; After receiving the dataReady signal, the ultrasonic waveform display thread reads the ultrasonic detection data in the data pipeline and displays the ultrasonic A-Scan waveform in real time.

9. The adaptive triggering serial acquisition method for ultrasonic pulse signals as described in claim 6, characterized in that, The USB serial channel thread utilizes the amplitude, single cycle, and pulse width of the upper interface echo in the A-Scan signal detected by the ultrasonic transducer. It employs an adaptive triggering method that combines the upper and lower edges with pulse time transit to locate ultrasonic feature signals in real time and sample them within the gated range. Invalid signals outside the gated range are directly discarded.

10. A portable testing device, characterized in that, It includes an ultrasound function module and a host computer main control module, which are connected via a universal USB interface; The host computer main control module includes a USB communication port and ultrasonic detection host computer software. The ultrasonic function module includes an FPGA logic unit, a high-voltage pulse excitation unit, an analog signal transmission unit, an analog signal receiving unit, a signal amplification unit, an analog-to-digital conversion unit, and a USB communication unit. The portable detection device is used to implement the ultrasonic pulse signal adaptive triggering serial acquisition method according to any one of claims 1 to 9.

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