Non-contact measurement of elastic modulus by using laser ultrasound

Non-contact measurement of elastic modulus is necessary for the in-line assessment of material in harsh environments such as high temperature. In this paper, a fully non-contact method to measure elastic modulus is proposed based on the laser ultrasonic technique (LUT) that uses a short-pulsed laser to generate ultrasound and the other laser coupled to an interferometer using a photorefractive crystal to detect the ultrasonic wave displacement. Basically, this method measures velocities of shear wave and longitudinal wave to obtain the elastic modulus. The uniqueness is that the velocity of shear wave is measured in the thermo-elastic regime first and then the velocity of longitudinal wave is measured in the ablation regime. This is because the strong mode of generated ultrasound is the shear wave in the thermo-elastic regime while the longitudinal wave in the ablation regime. Regime change can be achieved simply by switching the laser power, with no change in the measurement setup. In order to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method, the elastic modulus of aluminum casting alloy has been measured and the results were compared with a conventional contact method and a destructive tensile test. They showed good agreement with each other, which verified the usefulness of the proposed noncontact elastic modulus measurement method.