Posters

Abstract

The WATEREYE ultrasound testbed (WUT) is a prototype of an ultrasound Tx/Rx device with very large computing capabilities. It is developed with the aim of designing a more systematic and reliable ultrasound corrosion testing system that allows us to quickly migrate to a low-power and low-cost solution that can be deployed for corrosion monitoring in offshore wind turbines. The main block of the WUT is the RedPitaya, a low-cost measurement and control instrument based on the Zynq device that includes a Debian Linux distribution. It is capable of sampling signals at 125 MHz and the data is available on the Zynq processor thanks to its fast interface with internal FPGA. The whole process of generating and acquiring signals is managed from Linux user space using C/C++. A PC with Matlab can interface with the WUT to run experiments and collect and store the results for further analysis or validating the algorithms implemented in the Zynq. Corrosion estimation is done by calculating the thickness loss due to corrosion using the Time-of-Flight (ToF) principle. The WUT offers significant benefits: allowing frequent testings, evaluations and performance comparisons of different piezoelectric sensors; analyzing and verification of signal processing algorithms and methods; and observing and analyzing the characteristics of different coating types.