TY - CONF A1 - Bente, Klaas T1 - The thermoacoustic effect and its application in air-coupled testing of composite structures T2 - DGZfP-Proceedings BB 168 N2 - Airborne ultrasonic testing of lightweight, structured composite materials enables fast and contact-free non-destructive testing in aerospace and avoids material degradation due to contact with a coupling liquid. Established resonant air-coupled transducers consist of piezocomposite materials and several matching layers or more advanced materials like charged cellular polypropylene. The relaxation time and the specific frequency of such mechanical ultrasound emitters limit the spectrum of applications for each device. A short pulse length is key for reliable defect detection and each component at test can be best characterized at material- and geometry-specific frequencies. Here we show that focused thermoacoustic transducers are suited for testing lightweight, structured composite plates. Since the ultrasound is generated in air, these transducers show no resonance behavior and emit a broadband acoustic spectrum between 1.2 kHz and 1 MHz. Composite specimens of 3 mm to 9 mm thickness made of polylactide with a honeycomb structure were tested. Flat bottom holes were introduced to quantify the spatial resolution of the imaging method inside the strongly anisotropic specimen. As no broadband receivers are available yet, cellular polypropylene transducers were used as receivers, which limits the bandwidth of the method towards the bandwidth of the receiver. Nevertheless, we demonstrate the competitiveness of the thermoacoustic transducer compared to mechanical emitters at their respective resonance frequencies. Because a thermoacoustic transmitter features a nearly ideal pulse width, a single transmitter can be coupled with receivers with different resonance frequencies. With the development of broadband ultrasound receivers, air-coupled ultrasound spectroscopy will likely be possible in the near future. The analysed transducer holds the potential to speed up testing during production and maintenance in aerospace and automotives. Its combination with a broadband receiver could also expand the application field of air-coupled ultrasonic testing from a qualitative error detection towards a quantitative, spatially resolved analysis of mechanical material properties. T2 - 10th International Symposium on NDT in Aerospace CY - Dresden, Germany DA - 24.10.2018 KW - Thermoacoustics KW - Ultrasonic Testing KW - Broadband KW - Ultrasound Emission PY - 2018 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-464677 SN - 978-3-940283-96-2 SP - 1 EP - 8 PB - Deutsche Gesellschaft für Zerstörungsfreie Prüfung (DGZfP) CY - Berlin AN - OPUS4-46467 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -