Enhanced nonlinear inspection of diffusion bonded interfaces using reflected non-collinear ultrasonic wave mixing

Abstract

Ultrasonic wave mixing has shown promising potential for assessing otherwise hidden subtle imperfections in imperfect diffusion bonds between Ti-6Al-4V components. When interrogating a diffusion bonded specimen using non-collinear shear wave mixing, both bulk and interface nonlinearity will contribute to the transmitted nonlinear signal. Although a recent study has shown that changing the transducer alignment can suppress the intrinsic nonlinearity of the surrounding material to some extent so that the interface nonlinearity could be detected more selectively, it is still difficult to distinguish different levels of bond quality based on the detected transmitted signal only. Analytical and numerical studies showed that an imperfect interface generates the same amount of nonlinear displacement in the reflected and transmitted fields. In this study, we used the reflected nonlinear interface signature to characterize diffusion bonded interfaces. Our results indicate that it is better to use the reflected nonlinear interface signature to assess the bond quality, which is in agreement with our previous analytical and numerical predictions. However, the observed random phase of the reflected signature indicates that existing nonlinear interface models are insufficient for accurately describing the nonlinear interaction of shear incident waves with high-quality diffusion bonded interfaces.