A data-driven approach to construct a quantitative relationship between microstructural features of fatigue cracks and contact acoustic nonlinearity

This study demonstrates the feasibility of a data-driven approach to construct a quantitative relationship between nonlinear acoustic parameters and microstructural features of contact interfaces. The near-surface nonlinearity is measured using dynamic acousto-elastic testing (DAET) with a surface wave probe, while the microstructural features are extracted from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of fatigue cracks. Four aluminum alloy samples, each having a fatigue crack are prepared. Six local nonlinearity parameters are measured at different locations along the crack propagation direction. A total of 40 local measurements are acquired. A principal component analysis (PCA) reveals that all six nonlinearity parameters are correlated and hence can be replaced by one principal component (PC). Fifteen crack micro-geometrical features at each measurement point were extracted from the SEM images. Regression analysis is used to relate the PC of the nonlinearity parameters to the microstructural features at the crack interface. We compare three regression models that take variable selection into account: stepwise multiple linear regression (MLR), stepwise principal component regression (PCR), and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO). Despite having different principles, the three predictive models identify two features as the most significant in predicting the interface nonlinearity: the crack aperture (opening) distribution and the distance to the crack tip. The differences between the three models and the physical interpretation of the data-driven predictions are discussed.