Scale transform signal processing for optimal ultrasonic temperature compensation

In structural health monitoring, temperature compensation is an important step to reduce systemic errors and avoid false-positive results. Several methods have been developed to accomplish temperature compensation in guided wave systems, but these techniques are often limited in computational speed. In this paper, we present a new methodology for optimal, stretch-based temperature compensation that operates on signals in the stretch factor and scale-transform domains. Using these tools, we demonstrate three algorithms for temperature compensation that show improved computational speed relative to other optimal methods. We test the performance of these algorithms using experimental guided wave data.