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Peter B Nagy

Publications and source records attributed to Peter B Nagy.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

Laser-ultrasonic surface wave dispersion measurements on surface-treated metals.

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) velocity spectroscopy has been long considered to be one of the leading candidates for nondestructive characterization of surface-treated metals because of its ability to probe the material properties at different penetration depths depending on the inspection frequency. We developed a high-precision laser-ultrasonic technique to study the feasibility of SAW dispersion spectroscopy for residual stress assessment on shot-peened metals. This technique is capable of measuring SAW dispersion with a relative error of 0.1% over a frequency range from 2 to 15 MHz. Our experimental results obtained from shot-peened aluminum 2024-T351 samples indicate that the dispersion of the surface wave is a superposition of different effects of surface treatment in the material, including surface roughness, compressive residual stress, and cold work. Although the surface roughness induced component is often the dominating part of the overall dispersion, the experimental results also indicate that it is feasible to observe a perceivable change in the dispersion of the SAW when the specimen is heat-treated at different temperatures, which has no perceivable effect on the surface roughness. The part of the dispersion, which changes during annealing via thermal relaxation, is due to near-surface residual stresses and the decay of texture, although at high frequencies nonuniform grain coarsening could also play a significant role.

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Thermo-optical modulation of ultrasonic surface waves for NDE.

The well-known thermo-elastic effect of laser irradiation can be exploited to produce strong localized stresses when an expanded, long pulse, low-intensity laser beam is used to irradiate the specimen. These stresses will produce a parametric modulation of the received ultrasonic signals, that is somewhat similar to the acousto-elastic effect often used in nonlinear ultrasonic studies. It is shown in this paper that otherwise hidden small cracks in fatigue-damaged aluminum and titanium specimens can be readily detected by exploiting this optically induced thermo-elastic modulation during ultrasonic surface wave inspection since they are susceptible to crack closure and therefore exhibit strong parametric modulation. The temporal and spatial variations of the ultrasonic signals due to laser irradiation were evaluated numerically and experimentally. Based on these results, the direct temperature modulation of the ultrasonic velocity can be separated from the thermo-elastic stress modulation present only in cracked specimens. It was found that this method can be used to selectively increase the sensitivity of ultrasonic flaw detection to small fatigue cracks by more than one order of magnitude.

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Diffraction correction for precision surface acoustic wave velocity measurements.

Surface wave dispersion measurements can be used to nondestructively characterize shot-peened, laser shock-peened, burnished, and otherwise surface-treated specimens. In recent years, there have been numerous efforts to separate the contribution of surface roughness from those of near-surface material variations, such as residual stress, texture, and increased dislocation density. As the accuracy of the dispersion measurements was gradually increased using state-of-the-art laser-ultrasonic scanning and sophisticated digital signal processing methods, it was recognized that a perceivable dispersive effect, similar to the one found on rough shot-peened specimens, is exhibited by untreated smooth surfaces as well. This dispersion effect is on the order of 0.1%, that is significantly higher than the experimental error associated with the measurements and comparable to the expected velocity change produced by near-surface compressive residual stresses in metals below their yield point. This paper demonstrates that the cause of this apparent dispersion is the diffraction of the surface acoustic wave (SAW) as it travels over the surface of the specimen. The results suggest that a diffraction correction may be introduced to increase the accuracy of surface wave dispersion measurements. A simple diffraction correction model was developed for surface waves and this correction was subsequently validated by laser-interferometric velocity measurements on aluminum specimens.

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