Scientific Article

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

¹ IRL 2958 Georgia Tech – CNRS, Georgia Tech Europe, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology, 2 rue Marconi, 57070 Metz, France
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas Tech University, 2500 Broadway, Lubbock, Texas 79409, USA
³ Arts et Métiers ParisTech, LEM3 UMR CNRS 7239, 4 Rue Augustin Fresnel, 57078 Metz, France

^* Corresponding author: declercq@gatech.edu

Received: 6 April 2021
Accepted: 13 June 2022

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.