Determination of Stress-Acoustic Coefficients of Rayleigh Wave by Use of Laser Doppler Velocimetry

Abstract

In the present paper, 1) a new non-contact ultrasonic stress measurement technique is proposed based on acoustoelasticity, in which ultrasonic wave motion is detected by use of a laser Doppler velocimeter, and 2) the stress-acoustic coefficients of Rayleigh wave for aluminum alloy and structural steel are determined by the technique. In the measurement system, Rayleigh waves are emitted into the specimen by a wedge-type piezoelectric transducer and vertical velocities of the surface motions of the traveling Rayleigh waves are detected by the laser Doppler velocimeter at two points of 4 cm apart. In order to measure the traveling time of the wave between the two points, the converted voltage signals are supplied both to i) a sing-around unit and ii) to a digital oscilloscope. The time-of-flight over the distance between the two points is obtained either by subtracting the sing-around periods measured at the two points or by direct reading at zero-cross of the overlapped images of the two waves on the CR display of the oscilloscope. Both measurements are made at the same time under increasing or decreasing loads. The stress-acoustic coefficients obtained are −1.2×10^-5/MPa and −0.21×10^-5/MPa for aluminum alloy 5052 and structural steel SS400, respectively. These results are in good agreement with those determined using two knife-edge contact piezoelectric transducers. This study shows that the proposed non-contact measuring technique by use of laser velocimetry is applicable to determining the stress-acoustic coefficients.