Ultrasonic physics

The most popular ultrasonic nondestructive testing application has been associated with thickness measurement of a test object and defect location within the particular test object. Most of the applications to date have been associated with the testing of homogeneous isotropic materials. Recent work has extended the basic ultrasonic test philosophy to the field of composite materials and adhesive bonding inspection. Unfortunately, many difficulties occur because of the inhomogeneous and anisotropic characteristic of a composite material. This section includes a review of the physical principles associated with ultrasonic testing and the particular items that must receive special attention when inspecting composite materials or adhesively bonded sections of a structure. 

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Richardson, E.G. Ultrasonic Physics, Second Edition. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1942. 

The ultrasonic testing of anisotropic austenitic steel welds is a commonly used method in nondestructive testing. Nevertheless, it is often a problem to analyze the received signals in a satisfactory way. Computer simulation of ultrasonics has turned out to be a very helpful tool to gather information and to improve the physical understanding of complicated wave phenomena inside the samples. 

According to some remarks concerning the physical interaction between the incident ultrasonic wavelet and the defects [4-6], we consider that an Ascan signal, may be described as a weighted sum of few delayed and phase-shifted replicas of the ultrasonic incident wavelet j(r). We can express this mathematically as ... 

Manual ultrasonic testing offers the advantages of low equipment cost combined with the flexibility of the human operator to provide good access and complex scanning capability. However, a total reliance on the capabilities of the ultrasonic technician to visualise the physical situation leads to a number of drawbacks, including lack of accuracy and consistency of defect size and location measurements, lack of verification that the required scan coverage has been fully achieved, and lack of consistency in flaw classification. A further disadvantage is that the ultrasonic data is not permanently recorded there is therefore no opportunity for the data to be re-examined at a later date if required. 

Prokhorenko P.P., Baev A.R., Grintsevich E.M. Physical Principles and Application of Magnetic Fluids to Ultrasonic Testing -. Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials. -... 

Ultrasonic Microhardness. A new microhardness test using ultrasonic vibrations has been developed and offers some advantages over conventional microhardness tests that rely on physical measurement of the remaining indentation size (6). The ultrasonic method uses the DPH diamond indenter under a constant load of 7.8 N (800 gf) or less. The hardness number is derived from a comparison of the natural frequency of the diamond indenter when free or loaded. Knowledge of the modulus of elasticity of the material under test and a smooth surface finish is required. The technique is fast and direct-reading, making it useful for production testing of similarly shaped parts. 

P. N. T. Wells, Physical Principles of Ultrasonic Diagnosis, Academic Press, London, 1969. 

Ultrasonic Spectroscopy. Information on size distribution maybe obtained from the attenuation of sound waves traveling through a particle dispersion. Two distinct approaches are being used to extract particle size data from the attenuation spectmm an empirical approach based on the Bouguer-Lambert-Beerlaw (63) and a more fundamental or first-principle approach (64—66). The first-principle approach implies that no caHbration is required, but certain physical constants of both phases, ie, speed of sound, density, thermal coefficient of expansion, heat capacity, thermal conductivity. 

The ductility of GRT-polyethylene blends drastically decreases at ground rubber concentration in excess of 5%. The inclusion of hnely ground nitrile rubber from waste printing rollers into polyvinyl chloride (PVC) caused an increase in the impact properties of the thermoplastic matrix [76]. Addition of rubber powder that is physically modihed by ultrasonic treatment leads to PP-waste ethylene-propylene-diene monomer (EPDM) powder blends with improved morphology and mechanical properties [77]. 

Asai, H. (1961). Study of the hydration-dehydration in polyelectrolyte solutions by the ultrasonic technique. Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, 16, 761-6. 

Low-intensity ultrasound uses power levels (typically < 1 W cm 2) that are considered to be so small that the ultrasonic wave causes no physical or chemical alterations in the properties of the material through which the wave passes, i.e. it is nondestructive. However,... 

Phospholipids or similar water-insoluble amphiphilic natural substances aggregate in water to form bilayer liquid crystals which rearrange when exposed to ultrasonic waves to give spherical vesicles. Natural product vesicles are also called liposomes. Liposomes, as well as synthetic bilayer vesicles, can entrap substances in the inner aqueous phase, retain them for extended periods, and release them by physical process. 

Fig. 1.4 The calculated results for one acoustic cycle when a bubble in water at 3 °C is irradiated by an ultrasonic wave of 52 kHz and 1.52 bar in frequency and pressure amplitude, respectively. The ambient bubble radius is 3.6 pm. (a) The bubble radius, (b) The dissolution rate of OH radicals into the liquid from the interior of the bubble (solid line) and its time integral (dotted line). Reprinted with permission from Yasui K, Tuziuti T, Sivaknmar M, Iida Y (2005) Theoretical study of single-bubble sonochemistry. J Chem Phys 122 224706. Copyright 2005, American Institute of Physics...

Fig. 1.6 The correlation between the bubble temperature at the collapse and the amount of the oxidants created inside a bubble per collapse in number of molecules. The calculated results for various ambient pressures and acoustic amplitudes are plotted. The temperature of liquid water is 20 °C. (a) For an air bubble of 5 pm in ambient radius at 140 kHz in ultrasonic frequency, (b) For an oxygen bubble of 0.5 pm in ambient radius at 1 MHz. Reprinted with permission from Yasui K, Tuziuti T, Iida Y, Mitome H (2003) Theoretical study of the ambient-pressure dependence of sonochemical reactions. J Chem Phys 119 346-356. Copyright 2003, American Institute of Physics...

Fig. 1.9 The calculated results as a function of ambient radius at 300 kHz and 3 bar in ultrasonic frequency and pressure amplitude, respectively. The horizontal axis is in logarithmic scale, (a) The peak temperature (solid) and the molar fraction of water vapor (dash dotted) inside a bubble at the end of the bubble collapse, (b) The rate of production of oxidants with the logarithmic vertical axis. Reprinted with permission from Yasui K, Tuziuti T, Lee J, Kozuka T, Towata A, Iida Y (2008) The range of ambient radius for an active bubble in sonoluminescence and sonochemical reactions. J Chem Phys 128 184705. Copyright 2008, American Institute of Physics...

Fig. 1.15 Calculated acoustic amplitude under an ultrasonic horn as a function of the distance from the horn tip on the symmetry axis. The dotted curve is the calculated result by (1.21) when v0 = 0.77 m/s, X = 51.7 mm (29 kHz), and a = 5 mm. The solid curve is the estimated one in a bubbly liquid. Reprinted figure with permission from Yasui K, Iida Y, Tuziuti T, Kozuka T, Towata A (2008) Strongly interacting bubbles under an ultrasonic hom. Phys Rev E 77 016609 [http //link.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v77/e016609]. Copyright (2008) by the American Physical Society...

At times the net rates of chemical/physical processing achieved using ultrasonic irradiations are not sufficient so as to prompt towards industrial scale operation of sonochemical reactors. This is even more important due to the possibility of uneven distribution of the cavitational activity in the large scale reactors as discussed... 

Finally, the intrinsic features of the ultrasonic field, frequency and power, should also be taken into account in the design of the experimental arrangement. It is obvious that the mechanical and chemical effects derived from a low frequency field are quite different than those provided by high frequency fields, and these features should match with features of the electrode materials such dimension, structure and physical and chemical properties [30]. 

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