Ultrasonic investigation of the effect of compressive strains on 3D periodic bi-material structures

Abstract

Due to the specific elastic properties such as high stiffness to mass ratio, regular microstructure materials are widely used in the industry. The need for nondestructive evaluation is ubiquitous to ensure material quality. As an effective nondestructive testing method, ultrasound has great potential in providing an efficient materials characterization. However, contrary to more convenient ultrasound applications, challenges arise when applying ultrasound to 3D bi-material structures due to the coexistence of different phenomena, including diffraction effects caused by the periodicity. Two linear ultrasound methods, namely the Bragg diffraction and the comb filtering effect, are proposed to address this hurdle. The results show that the comb filtering effect effectively characterizes, respectively, the vertical structural quality of the bi-material. Bragg diffraction can also expose structural variations in the horizontal plane.