Semi-analytical formulation for the guided waves-based reconstruction of elastic moduli

In this study an inverse procedure based on the propagation of guided ultrasonic waves is proposed for the characterization of the elastic material constants of plates. The procedure consists of an optimization problem in which the discrepancy between the dispersion curves obtained through a semi analytical finite element (SAFE) formulation and numerical or experimental dispersion curves is minimized. The numerical dispersion curves were obtained from the application of the commercial finite element analysis software ANSYS. Finally experimental data were obtained by adopting a hybrid broadband laser/PZT ultrasonic setup in a pitch-catch configuration. For both numerical and experimental data, the joint time-frequency analysis of the continuous wavelet transform was used. The optimization scheme proposed in this study is based on an improved version of the simplex search method. The scheme inputs an initial guess of the material parameters in the SAFE formulation. The values of these parameters are iteratively updated until the discrepancy between the SAFE-based group velocity dispersion curves and the numerical or experimental curves is minimized. The scheme is designed to minimize the discrepancy associated with the lowest symmetric and anti-symmetric order mode simultaneously. The validity of the SAFE method coupled to the inverse procedure scheme is tested to characterize the elastic material properties of a 2.54 mm thick aluminum plate. As the SAFE formulation is valid for waveguides of arbitrary cross-section the paper represents the first step toward the integration of an inversion scheme applicable into the SAFE algorithm to characterize the material properties of waveguides of complex geometries and various boundary conditions.