Removing Surface Accretions with Piezo-Excited High-Frequency Structural Waves

Unwanted accretions on structures are a common machinery maintenance problem, which can pose a serious safety threat if not treated effectively and punctually. In this paper we investigate the capability of piezo-excited structural waves for invoking delamination of accreted material from waveguides. We apply a wave-based technique for modelling piezoelectric excitation based on semi-analytical finite elements to model the interface shear stress associated with piezo-actuated structural waves. As a proof of concept, we present a demonstration experiment in which patches of material are removed from a beam-like waveguide with emulated anechoic terminations using ultrasonic excitation.