We present a technique to measure the mechanical complex amplitude, i.e. the mechanical amplitude and phase of vibration, of an ultrasonic plane wavefield of nanometric amplitude that propagates on a surface. Our aim is to detect perturbations of the initially smooth wavefronts that indicate the presence of flaws in the material. We use bursts of surface acoustic waves (SAWs) and a double-pulsed TV holography system that records two correlograms with time separations down to 1.5 µs. The phases of the correlograms are calculated separately using the spatial Fourier transform method (SFTM) and operated on to obtain the phase change between exposures. In the resultant optical phase map, the field of instantaneous displacements of the surface (that comprises several periods of the SAW) acts as a modulated spatial carrier, now related to the mechanical phase and amplitude, that are extracted by applying the SFTM again.

We describe the detection of bursts of surface acoustic waves by a double-pulsed TV holography technique. We describe mathematically the long- and short-wave bursts in the output correlograms and validate theoretical results with experimental images. The use of short-wave bursts permits us to scan the surface and makes it easier to distinguish, for purposes of nondestructive testing, the disturbances produced by flaws.

A method based on fitting the theoretical dispersion curves of Lamb waves to experimental data is presented to determine the thickness and two independent elastic constants of aluminum plates a few millimeters thick. The waves are generated by means of the wedge method using a narrowband source, selecting the wedge angle and the acoustic frequency f so that mainly one mode is excited. A self-developed pulsed electronic speckle pattern interferometry system renders a two dimensional map of the out-of-plane acoustic displacement field at the plate surface, which allows an accurate measurement of the acoustic wavelength lambda(1). For any mode, the relation between lambda(1) and f depends on the three unknown parameters, so at least three experimental measurements (lambda(1i),f(i)) with different frequencies and/or different modes are required to calculate them. The suitability of different Lamb modes to determine each parameter when the others are known is studied, as well as the conditions that the experimental set of values must fulfill to calculate all three parameters. Numerous Lamb modes at different frequencies are generated in each plate, and a fitting is made based on the minimization of the error function, resulting in an accuracy better than 1%.

We present a novel capability of the TV holography technique applied to the non-destructive testing of mechanical parts or structures with the form of a plate or a shell, which consists of the recording of high quality synthetic movies of the spatio-temporal evolution of instantaneous ultrasonic displacement fields of the surface under inspection. Moreover, in the case of narrowband acoustic excitation, movies of the spatio-temporal evolution of the acoustic amplitude and of the total acoustic phase can also be generated. Some examples of the application of the technique to flaw detection in aluminium plates using surface waves are presented. As a previous step for evaluating the context and the advantages of the new capability presented, a description of the state of the art with a comparative analysis about non-destructive testing techniques based on optical probing of ultrasound, focused on shell structures, is included in the first part of this article.

The measurement of ultrasonic surface acoustic waves of nanometric amplitude by TV holography (TVH) was demonstrated some years ago. The spatial periodicity of the wavefield across the optical phase difference maps was exploited to yield the mechanical amplitude and phase of the propagating wave. Now we present a refinement of the technique where we also profit from the temporal periodicity, at each point of the surface, of the displacement induced by the wave. We record a series of sets of primary correlograms, which are processed to yield optical phase-difference maps. We change slightly the delay between the excitation of the wave and the measurement from one recording to the next, so that the position of the wavefield on the resultant images is shifted accordingly. Every point on the surface, which oscillates at the frequency of the wave, is thus recorded at several instants of its oscillation cycle in consecutive optical phase difference maps of the sequence. We have then spatial periodicity at a given instant across each image and temporal periodicity at a given point on the surface across the series of images. This feature is exploited to calculate a three-dimensional Fourier transform of the data. As we employ narrowband ultrasonic waves, the spatial content of the spectrum is contained in a small region of the spatial frequency plane and within a thin slice of temporal frequencies, and can be easily filtered and inverse Fourier transformed to obtain the mechanical amplitude and phase of the wave. This method intends to extend the detection capability of the TVH technique to ultrasonic waves of lower amplitude.