Experimental characterization of material nonlinearity using Lamb waves

The objective of this research is to develop an accurate and reliable procedure to measure the second order harmonic of a Lamb wave propagating in a metallic plate. There are two associated complications in measuring these nonlinear Lamb waves, namely, their inherent dispersive and multimode natures. To overcome these, this research combines a time-frequency representation with a hybrid wedge generation and laser interferometric detection system. The effectiveness of the proposed procedure is demonstrated by characterizing the inherent material nonlinearity of two different aluminum plates whose absolute nonlinearity parameters are known from longitudinal wave measurements. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.