A Comb Transducer for Guided Wave Generation and Mode Selection
S . P. Pelts, D. Jiao, and J. L. Rose
Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802
Absfract - Several Lamb wave modes are generated influence of the ultrasonic
comb
transducer
experimentally with a comb transducer. To further parameters on the amplitudes of the excited modes
understandcombtransducerefficiency and mode is investigated.
control, a theoretical model is developedforthe
ultrasoniccomb. Thecombtransducergenerates EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
wavesthatare influenced by suchparameters as
number of elements,spacing between elements, To demonstrate the
capability the
of
comb
their
size,
pulsing
sequence, and pressure transducer for guided wave generation, experiments
distributions. The excitedelastic field dependson wereconducted using a 5.4 MHzbroad band flat
thefrequencyofexcitation, plate thickness and combtransducer on a 3mm thickaluminumplate.
elastic
properties.
Techniques
are studied to Twenty- elements(singlespacing),ten-elements
optimize
the
applied
loading and thecomb (double
spacing), and seven-elements (triple
transducer design parameters so that only the modes spacing) of a comb transducer were used as senders
that
are most sensitive to particular material and variable angle beam transducers as receivers for
characteristics can be generated. a through transmission setup as shown in Figure I .
A tone burst system was used for data acquisition.
Function [Link]
INTRODUCTION cycle pulseswereamplified to 167 volts to the
transducer. Received guided wave RF signals were
Oneofthefirstapplicationsof
comb
a type recorded with aLeCroy 9310 digitaloscilloscope
transducer in the NDE field was discussed in and IBM computer.
Victorov [l], and some features of wave excitation
by combtypewere studied in [2, 31. It is well Receiver
.. ... .. Comb Transducer
known that for a fixed frequency of time harmonic
excitation in a linearly elastic plate that there exists
a finite number ofpropagation modes and an infinite Plate
number of evanescent modes, with their own
displacement and stress distributionpatterns through
1-1 AD
[Link] Figure 1 , Transducer setup (Set at 3.00" and 6.00"
modes
decaysexponentially
away from the between transducers).
transducer,onlythepropagating modes make a
significant contribution to the field at some point far According the to
phase and group
velocity
from the transducer. From an NDE point of view, dispersion curves Lamb wave modes were generated
somepropagation modes aremoresensitive to (Figure 2) by adjusting the
function
generator
particular
material
characteristics. It is excitationfrequencyand the receivertransducer
advantageous therefore,
to
modify the applied angle to obtainoptimumwave mode [Link]
loadingdistribution so thatonly modes with groupvelocities of each mode weremeasured by
significantamplitude would be excited.
The moving the receiver 3" from the sender. The modes
0-7803-3615-11961$5.00 0 1996 IEEE 1996 IEEE ULTRASONICS SYMPOSIUM - 857
Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ROORKEE. Downloaded on October 13,2025 at [Link] UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
were confirmed by comparing with both phase and Guided waves were successfully generated in pipes
groupvelocity
dispersion
curves. As expected as well [5,6].
Lamb wave modes were generated that were very
close to theintersectionpoints between thecomb THEORETICAL FORMULATION
straight line Eq. (1) and the
phase velocity
dispersion curves. The solution of the boundary value problem for the
Lambwaveamplitudecan be used to optimize
v,,h= AY* f (1) element
size,
spacing,
frequency,
number of
elements, and hence the potential for controlling the
Very clear RF signals were obtained. Thetypical RF amplitude value. One samplestudy is presented
signals are presentedin Figure 3. here that varieselement width foraparticular
element
spacing. A typical
comb transducer is
shown in Figure 4.
T Comb transducer
Figure 2. Generatedguided wave modes in phase
velocity dispersion curve diagram for an aluminum As
plate (VL=6.3 M SV, T = ~1 .K d s ) .
Figure 4. Comb transducer modeling.
Let us assume that a comb transducer basN equally
spaced elements which are in contact with a elastic
plate of thickness d. It is assumed that for this type
loading we haveaperiodicset of normalstresses
under the comb elements. The boundary conditions
for the plate canbe written as
o q ( x , y = + d / 2 ) = 0 for Vx (2)
p,,exp(-iwt) if X E G
o,(x,y=d/2) = (3)
0 if x e G
G=Ugk
k=l
o ; , ( x , y = -d / 2) = 0 for Vx (5)
Figure 3 . Typical RF signals from 7-element comb
transducer. where the gk is the plate surface area covered by
the klh element, andp, is a known constant.
858 - 1996 IEEE ULTRASONICS SYMPOSIUM
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Applyingthe
Fourier integral transform to the As=element width AW + gap
between
elements
governingequation of motion and the boundary (Figure4).
conditions
weexpress
the
components of the
displacements
amplitude in integral form. 6
,'<--.
~
'\
,
~ ~~ ~~~~~~ ~~
......
;; il
~~~~~~~~
1 Y I ,\ ! - - - l 0 8tlm
u ( " ) ( x , y )= - IK,(w,a,y)Q(a)e-'mda (6)
S
- 4 /
/ '-,,-I 5 mm ~~~~~ J
2ff l- E
where ...
Q(a)= p0 Se'"'d< (7)
I------'-
, , . , ---_
~~ . , ,Ti
!
(i I 12 14 16 I 8 2 2 2 2.4 2 6 2 8 3
As (n1m)
(a)
Where U(') = U , U(*) = W are the amplitudes of the
35 ~ ~~
in-plane and out-of-plane displacements components 0.05 m m ;
..... - 0 . 3 ,"m !
respectively
and
time
dependent term exp(-iW is 3 1
~
elsewhere
omitted.
The known function -
$25 I
K,,(@,a,y ) dependsonly on theelastic properties f l !
of the plate. The source term Q(a)carries loading -B 1 5 _--.
j
1
informationaccording to [Link] - I/--;+-
....,.
integration
contour r
is chosen in accordance with 0 5 ; I /
I
radiation conditions [4].
The computation theof
integrals (6) is based on I I2 14 16 I8 2 22 24 26 28 3
residue
theory.
For x > displacement
c the field As (mm)
can be written as
(b)
Figure 5.(a) Out-of-plane W and(b) in-plane U
displacement
magnitudeversus As along the
(8) dispersion curve S, for an aluminum plate of Imm
thickness.
Sourceinfluence is presented
for
4
differentelementsizes0.05mm, 0.3 mm, 1.0 mm,
where uj( n )( y ) denotes
the modal displacement
and 1.5 mm.
field of mode j ofthetractionfreeelastic plate,
C(q) is a known function, and a, -are roots of the Note that a much larger amplitude is available for an
Rayleigh-Lamb
dispersion
equation. The element width of 1.0 mm. If aparticular As is
summation in Eq. (8) is over all propagating and selected in a design, an element width could then be
evanescent modes which can exist in a plate for a selected. In most cases along S,, a I .O mm element
particular frequency of interest. As can be seen, the width for amplitude purposes would be selected in
excitation
amplitude
depends on comb
the this sample problem. If a ratio of out of plane to in
transducerparameters through thefunction Q ( a ) , plane werecriticalataparticular As, adifferent
that determines how effectively the combo f a given element width might be selected.
designexcites the mode o f a given wave number Thesourceterm T(u) = Q(a)/@4*a), where a is
a,. Shown in Figure 5 areplots o f magnitude element width, shows the efficiency with which the
displacements
versus
comb spacing As, for combtransducercangeneratemodesfordifferent
transducer with elements.
4 Thecomb spacing phase velocity values. As can be seen from Figure
1996 IEEE ULTRASONICS SYMPOSIUM - 859
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6, asmallerelementwidthismoreeffectivefor Lamb wave modesweregenerated with different
excitation in the low phase velocity range. amplitudes.
Significantexcitation will occurfor high phase
velocity for anyelement width. AKNOWLEDGEMENT
In order to obtainthe best excitationability of a
transducer only in a certain area of phase velocity Thanks are given to Dr. Vinold S. Aganvala of the
range, one should use transducer design that Naval Warfare Center, Aircraft Division, Paxtuxent
combine two different element widths for given As. River, MD for technical support of this project and
This leads to lim T ( a )= 0. to the Office of Naval Research for
financial
Vph+m
[Link] given to EPRI and Jack
Spanner Jr. for initiating efforts on this subject.
REFERENCES
[l] Victorov I. A. Rayleigh andLambWaves:
Physical Theory and Applications, Plenum
Press, 1967.
[2] Ditri J. J., Rose J. L., Pilarski A. "Generation
of guided waves in hollow cylinders by wedge
and comb type transducers," Review of
Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive
Evaluation (Ed. by D. 0. Thompson and D. E.
Chimenti), vol. 12, 1993, pp. 211-218.
[3] Demo1 T., Blanquet P. and Delaberre C. "Lamb
wavegeneration using aflatmulti-element
array device,"1995
IEEE
Ultrasonic
Symposium Proceedings, pp. 791-794.
[4]Pelts S. P. andRose J. L., "Sourceinfluence
parameters onelastic
guided
waves in an
orthtropic plate," J. [Link]. Am. 99 (4),
Pt. I , 1996, pp. 2 124-2 129.
[ 5 ] Rose J. L., JiaoD.,"UltrasonicGuidedwave
NDE for piping," The First ASNT U. S.-Japan
I1 I
"Oh & m a l
Symposium on Advances in NDT, Kahulu,
Hawaii, June 24-28,1996.
(h) Element width I .OO mm (different scales)
[6] Rose, J. L., Jiao, D., and Spanner, J. Jr.,
"Ultrasonic Guided Wave NDE for Piping" To
Figure 6. Source term T(a) as a function of phase be published in Materials Evaluation, 1996.
velocity of two different element widths for a 4
element comb transducer (frequency excitation
[Link], comb spacing A ~ 1 . mm).
6
CONCLUDJNG REMARKS
Theoretical
calculations from comb transducer
modelingshowedthat
Lamb waveexcitability
depends on such transducer parameters, as spacing
and element width, etc. Experimentally nice shape
860 - 1996 IEEE ULTRASONICS SYMPOSIUM
Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY ROORKEE. Downloaded on October 13,2025 at [Link] UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.