{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,11,15]],"date-time":"2025-11-15T09:57:14Z","timestamp":1763200634679,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":36,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"13","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2024,6,28]],"date-time":"2024-06-28T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1719532800000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"Fund of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory for Intelligent Micro-Nano Optoelectronic Technology","award":["2020B1212030010","2021KQNCX149"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2020B1212030010","2021KQNCX149"]}]},{"name":"Youth Talent Innovation Project of the Guangdong Education Department in China","award":["2020B1212030010","2021KQNCX149"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["2020B1212030010","2021KQNCX149"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Sensors"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The identification of slag inclusion defects in welds is of the utmost importance in guaranteeing the integrity, safety, and prolonged service life of welded structures. Most research focuses on different kinds of weld defects, but branch research on categories of slag inclusion material is limited and critical for safeguarding the quality of engineering and the well-being of personnel. To address this issue, we design a simulated method using ultrasonic testing to identify the inclusion of material categories in austenitic stainless steel. It is based on a simulated experiment in a water environment, and six categories of cubic specimens, including four metallic and two non-metallic materials, are selected to simulate the slag materials of the inclusion defects. Variational mode decomposition optimized by particle swarm optimization is employed for ultrasonic signals denoising. Moreover, the phase spectrum of the denoised signal is utilized to extract the phase characteristic of the echo signal from the water\u2013slag specimen interface. The experimental results show that our method has the characteristics of appropriate decomposition and good denoising performance. Compared with famous signal denoising algorithms, the proposed method extracted the lowest number of intrinsic mode functions from the echo signal with the highest signal-to-noise ratio and lowest normalized cross-correlation among all of the comparative algorithms in signal denoising of weld slag inclusion defects. Finally, the phase spectrum can ascertain whether the slag inclusion is a thicker or thinner medium compared with the weld base material based on the half-wave loss existing or not in the echo signal phase.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/s24134199","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,6,28]],"date-time":"2024-06-28T05:22:38Z","timestamp":1719552158000},"page":"4199","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":1,"title":["A Water Environment-Based Simulated Method for Ultrasonic Testing of Slag Inclusion Weld Defects Based on Improved VMD"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"24","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0003-4337-6390","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jing","family":"Zhang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Innovation Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau 999078, China"},{"name":"School of Applied Science and Civil Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai 519006, China"}]},{"given":"Guocai","family":"Zhang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China"}]},{"given":"Zijie","family":"Chen","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Innovation Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau 999078, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0005-6116-9154","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Hailin","family":"Zou","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Innovation Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau 999078, China"}]},{"given":"Shuai","family":"Xue","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Applied Science and Civil Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai 519006, China"}]},{"given":"Jianjie","family":"Deng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Applied Science and Civil Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai 519006, China"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6768-1483","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jianqing","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Innovation Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau 999078, China"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,6,28]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"317","DOI":"10.1016\/j.matdes.2003.10.010","article-title":"An investigation of microstructure\/property relationships in dissimilar welds between martensitic and austenitic stainless steels","volume":"25","author":"Baylan","year":"2004","journal-title":"Mater. 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