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Ultrasonics
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a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: The aim of this work is to study the fundamental Lamb modes interaction with defects in isotropic plates.
Received 22 July 2007 For these experimental investigations, symmetrical notches with various depths milled in aluminum
Accepted 7 August 2008 plates are considered. Moreover, the incident Lamb wave of a specific mode is generated by means of
Available online 15 August 2008
two identical thin piezoceramic transducers placed at the opposite sides of the plate. The waves scattered
by the notch are recorded with conventional transducers located on the plate surface in front and behind
Keywords: the defect. The selection of the A0 or the S0 modes is obtained by exciting the transducers with anti-
Lamb waves
phased or in-phased signals, respectively. Furthermore, a calibration process is investigated to correct
NDT
Notches
errors caused by the presence of the receiver between the emitters and the defects. The power reflection
and transmission coefficients are then obtained and the power balance is verified. Finally, these measure-
ments are compared successfully with those obtained by a numerical method using the finite-element
modeling described in a previous work.
Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
0041-624X/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ultras.2008.08.002
F. Benmeddour et al. / Ultrasonics 49 (2009) 202–205 203
2. Experimental set-up and verify the Shannon sampling theorem. The acquired signals are
filtered by an implemented averaging method in the oscilloscope.
2.1. General description In fact, 50 signals are acquired in few seconds and averaged in or-
der to get a high signal to noise ratio (SNR). Errors between these
Fig. 1 illustrates the instrumentation used in the experimental signals are less than 0.5%. Then, the result is transmitted to the
investigation to study the fundamental Lamb modes interaction computer for recording and signal processing. Furthermore, in or-
with symmetrical notches. A pulse generator (HM 8035) is used der to verify the repeatability process and the gel coupling effect,
to trigger simultaneously the oscilloscope (Le Croy type LT344) the receiver is removed and replaced at the same location 20 times.
and the two arbitrary function generators (HP 33120A) which Hence, an error bar can be computed for each experience. Fig. 2b
can deliver a tone burst modified by a Hanning window function shows the average of the 20 electrical signals measured with the
to the emitter. The emitter is composed of two identical piezoce- transducer (C) at a distance of l1 = 185 mm (Fig. 2a) from the left
ramic transducers (PZT-27) placed at the opposite sides of the left edge of the healthy plate when the A0 mode is launched whereas
plate edge. These transducers are 1 mm thick to be thin, 50 mm Fig. 2c illustrates the case of the S0 mode. In each case, the selection
long to be unidirectional [8] and 6 mm large to be close to the free of one Lamb mode is successful, which validates the experimental
mechanical lateral resonance-frequency of 200 kHz. setup. Since the S0 mode has a higher group velocity than the A0
The application of anti-phased electrical signals to the two piez- mode, its reflection on the right edge of the plate (re0 ) is visible.
oceramic transducers generates the A0 mode, whereas the in-
phased excitation generates the S0 mode. Two conventional trans- 2.3. Calibration process
ducers (Panametrics) are chosen in reception for their easy han-
dling and are placed on the plate surface before and after the Experimental measurements are carried out to study the recei-
notch at the desired locations. These transducers are more sensi- ver presence effect on the transmitted wave packets. Therefore, an
tive to normal displacements than tangential ones. Local honey identical conventional receiver (C0 ) is placed between the emitter
and gel coupling are employed for the emitters and the receivers, and the conventional effective receiver (C) as depicted on Fig. 3a.
respectively. All the signals from the sensors are recorded using Hence, Figs. 3b and c depict measured signals when the A0 and S0
the digital oscilloscope and transferred via the GPIB bus to a com- modes are launched, respectively. It can be shown that the trans-
puter for signal processing. mitted signal measured with the effective receiver (C) is disturbed.
The six aluminum plates used in the experimental investiga-
tions have the following dimensions: 6 mm thick, 300 mm wide
(a) without receiver C’
and 500 mm long. Moreover, all these plates except one contain
50 mm wide notches, milled across the full plate width normal C
to the transmission path. The tested plates and notches have thick-
nesses equal to 2d and 2dp, respectively, where d is the half thick-
ness of the plate and p takes values from 0 to 1 with a constant
increment. The notches depths are equal to 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2 and
2.5 mm which corresponds to the ratios p = 5/6, 4/6, 3/6, 2/6, and (b) A launched (c) S launched
0 0
1/6, respectively. The desired notches width and depths are ob- 0.4 0.4
tained with a conventional milling machine. in (A0)
Amplitude (V)
0.2 0.2 in (S )
0 re’ (S )
0
2.2. Measurement procedure 0 0
The arbitrary function generators are programmed to excite the −0.2 −0.2
two thin transducers with in-phased and anti-phased signals. −0.4 −0.4
These signals correspond to 5 sinusoidal cycles at a frequency of 0 100 200 0 100 200
Time (µs) Time (µs)
200 kHz windowed by a Hanning function. Then, the oscilloscope
is programmed to acquire 2000 temporal points at a sampling fre- Fig. 2. Experimental configuration for measurements in a healthy plate (a) and
quency of 10 MHz which corresponds to 0.1 ls between each point measured signals when the A0 (b) and S0 (c) modes are launched.
Pulse
generator Oscilloscope
200.000,00 kHz
Fixation in (A0)
Receivers 0.2 0.2 in (S0)
device re’ (S )
C 0
C 2dp 2 0 0
Honey 1
l1 l2 2d=6 mm
−0.2 −0.2
SN −0.4 −0.4
Emitter 0 100 200 0 100 200
Transducers Aluminium plate Time (µs) Time (µs)
Fig. 1. Experimental device to study the interaction of Lamb modes with symmet- Fig. 3. Experimental configuration for the calibration process (a) and measured
rical notches. signals when the A0 (b) and S0 (c) modes are launched.
204 F. Benmeddour et al. / Ultrasonics 49 (2009) 202–205
In fact, the presence of the conventional transducer (C0 ) along the 3. Experimental results
path of the propagation can be considered as a surface perturba-
tion because of its dimensions (39 17 15 mm). Hence, Fig. 3b Figs. 5a and b display the electric signals measured before and
show that the amplitude of the A0 mode (Fig. 2b) decreases to after the notch, respectively, when the A0 mode is launched for a
about 40%. Furthermore, its shape is modified by the multiple plate containing a 2.5 mm (p = 1/6) deep SN. In the Fig. 5a, the first
reflections from the edges of the receiver. Contrarily to this, the and the second wave packets correspond to the incident (in) and
S0 mode (Fig. 3c) decreases only to about 5% (Fig. 2c). the first reflection (re1) from the notch of the A0 mode. Further-
In practice, when a fundamental Lamb mode is launched from more, multiple reflections from the edges of the notch and the
the left edge of the plate, the incident wave packet encounter the plate are observed. However, Fig. 5b displays the second transmis-
conventional receiver C1 placed at l1. Then, the disturbed transmit- sion (tr2) after the SN of the A0 mode.
ted wave packet is reflected by the left edge of the notch and re- It is important to precise that by means of the flight time and
ceived by C1. Hence, the measured reflection wave packet must the shape observation of each wave packet, there is no significant
be corrected by multiplying its amplitude by 40% when the A0 mode conversion from the incident A0 to the S0 mode and from the
mode is launched whereas the amplitude of the reflection wave incident S0 to the A0 mode.
packet is multiplied by only 5% when the S0 mode is launched. Since the reflection and transmission Lamb modes wave packets
For the transmitted wave packet after the notch, the first recei- are identified, quantified and corrected, power reflection and
ver C1 is taken off. Hence, the transmitted amplitude does not need transmission coefficients can be computed.
any correction. However, in order to take into account implicitly The power balance is determined as described in a previous
the dispersion, the diffraction and the attenuation effects, the inci- work. Hence, the incident mode generates [1] a first reflection
dent wave packet is acquired on a healthy plate with C2 (Fig. 4a) at (re1) and a first transmission (tr1) waves from the first edge of
the same location l2 (see Eq. (2)) as the transmitted wave packet in the SN. Then, the first transmitted wave (tr1) generates a second
a plate containing a SN (Fig. 4b). reflection (re2) and a second transmission (tr2) waves from the sec-
The power reflection and transmission coefficients are com- ond edge of the notch. Consequently, the power balance can be ex-
puted at the central working frequency which corresponds to the pressed as
maximum of the Lamb wave packet envelope as
R1;n þ R2;n þ T 2;n ¼ 1; ð3Þ
2
e
S nðreÞ ðl1 ; dÞ where R1 is the first power reflection, R2 the second power reflec-
RExp
1;n ¼ ; ð1Þ
eS nðinÞ ðl1 ; dÞ tion and T2 the second power transmission coefficients.
Figs. 6a and b show power reflection and transmission coeffi-
and cients comparisons between numerical [1] and experimental re-
2 sults of the interaction of the A0 and S0 modes, respectively, with
e
S nðtrÞ ðl2 ; dÞ
T Exp
2;n ¼ ; ð2Þ different SN depths. Several experimental measurements (20) are
eS nðinÞ ðl2 ; dÞ performed to determine the displayed error bars as mentioned in
the previous section. Good agreement is found for both A0 and S0
where the exponent Exp denotes experimental measurement, S the
cases. Therefore, by analogy to numerical results, the power bal-
received signal, l1 and l2 are the measurement distances from the
ance is verified. Moreover, Figs. 6a and b show that the power
left edge of the plate. The subscriptions in, re and tr denote incident,
reflection coefficient of the A0 mode is greater than of the S0 mode.
reflected and transmitted wave, respectively, and n is the Lamb
mode (A0 or S0). Subscriptions 1 and 2 denote that the measurement
is performed before and after the notch, respectively. The tilde sym-
bol (e) indicates that the corresponding value is determined at the a b
central frequency by taking the maximum of the wave packet 0.4 0.4
in (A )
envelope. 0
Amplitude (V)
a C
2 a b
1 T (A ) 1
l2 2 0 T2 (S0)
R and T
0.5 0.5
b C
2
R1 (A0) R (S )
1 0
l2 0 0
1/6 2/6 3/6 4/6 5/6 1/6 2/6 3/6 4/6 5/6
p p
Fig. 4. Experimental configuration of the calibration process for the transmission Fig. 6. Comparison between numerical and experimental results when the
region of a: healthy plate (a) and plate containing a notch (b). launched Lamb mode A0 (a) or S0 (b) interacts with a SN.
F. Benmeddour et al. / Ultrasonics 49 (2009) 202–205 205