Dorothea Altorfer, wife of one of our faculty members, created an event at the Fete de la Nature in Arnaudville, LA
Physics Professor and UL Lafayette Awarded Patent for Efficient Method to Determine Aging of Navy Ships
Wed, 10/16/2019 - 10:12pmSeptember 17, 2019: UL Lafayette application to USPO for “SYSTEM AND METHODS FOR DETERMINING SENSITIZATION OF ALLOY BY MEASURING AND CORRELATING ULTRASONIC PARAMETERS,” is awarded, as Patent# US10,416,120B2 with Gabriela Petculescu as inventor.
Physics Professor invents a noninvasive method for monitoring degradation in marine alloys for safer and more economical naval operations. A large number of ships have already been built using Al-Mg alloys, benefiting from their properties until sensitization (a heat-driven degradation process) sets in. Critical structural components that become sensitized can become a safety hazard. Repairs are costly, premature, or dangerously overdue, as the components’ integrity becomes vulnerable (through stress corrosion cracking and/or exfoliation). The patented ultrasonic method for nondestructively monitoring the level of sensitization provides a solution to these problems. For those interested, the physics involved in the patent is captured in Gabriela Petculescu’s paper “Sensitization in Aluminum Alloys: Effect on Acoustic Parameters,” in CORROSION, vol. 74(11), pp. 1237-1244 (2018).