Non-destructive technique for surface wave velocity measurement

摘要

It is often desirable to measure absolute and relative USW velocities in a specimen. One example is a specimen which is to be tested for residual surface stresses. The specimen is provided with two scratches which are parallel and a known distance apart. An ultrasonic surface wave (USW) transducer is attached to the surface of the specimen in such a way as to efficiently transfer USW energy to the specimen. During testing, the incident pulse from the transducer is partially reflected at each scratch. The same transducer generates and detects both reflections. The transducer output goes through a clipping circuit which clips the large incident voltage spikes in the output and passes the smaller, echo voltages through to an oscilloscope. The oscilloscope horizontal sweep is driven at a frequency which is the reciprocal of the difference in arrival times between the two reflected pulses.