Indirect Method for Measuring Absolute Acoustic Nonlinearity Parameter Using Surface Acoustic Waves with a Fully Non-Contact Laser-Ultrasonic Technique

Abstract

This paper proposes an indirect method to measure absolute acoustic nonlinearity parameters using surface acoustic waves by employing a fully non-contact laser-ultrasonic technique. For this purpose, the relationship between the ratio of relative acoustic nonlinearity parameters measured using the proposed method in two different materials (a test material and a reference material) and the ratio of absolute acoustic nonlinearity parameters in these two materials was theoretically derived. Using this relationship, when the absolute nonlinearity parameter of the reference material is known, the absolute nonlinearity parameter of the test material can be obtained using the ratio of the measured relative parameters of the two materials. For experimental verification, aluminum and copper specimens were used as reference and test materials, respectively. The relative acoustic nonlinearity parameters of the two materials were measured from surface waves generated and received using lasers. Additionally, the absolute parameters of aluminum and copper were measured using a conventional direct measurement method, with the former being used as a reference value and the latter being used for comparison with the estimation result. The absolute parameter of copper estimated by the proposed method showed good agreement with the directly measured result.