TY - JOUR A1 - Bente, Klaas A1 - Rus, J. A1 - Mooshofer, H. A1 - Gaal, Mate A1 - Grosse, C.U. T1 - Broadband air-coupled ultrasound emitter and receiver enable simultaneous measurement of thickness and speed of sound in solids N2 - Air-coupled ultrasound sensors have advantages over contact ultrasound sensors when a sample should not become contaminated or influenced by the couplant or the measurement has to be a fast and automated inline process. Thereby, air-coupled transducers must emit high-energy pulses due to the low air-to-solid power transmission ratios (10−3 to 10−8). Currently used resonant transducers trade bandwidth—a prerequisite for material parameter analysis—against pulse energy. Here we show that a combination of a non-resonant ultrasound emitter and a non-resonant detector enables the generation and detection of pulses that are both high in amplitude (130 dB) and bandwidth (2 µs pulse width). We further show an initial application: the detection of reflections inside of a carbon fiber reinforced plastic plate with thicknesses between 1.7 mm and 10 mm. As the sensors work contact-free, the time of flight and the period of the in-plate reflections are independent parameters. Hence, a variation of ultrasound velocity is distinguishable from a variation of plate thickness and both properties are determined simultaneously. The sensor combination is likely to find numerous industrial applications necessitating high automation capacity and opens possibilities for air-coupled, single-side ultrasonic inspection. KW - Thermoacoustic emitter KW - Optical microphone KW - Air-coupled ultrasound KW - Local resonance KW - Thickness measurement KW - Thickness resonance PY - 2023 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-569533 VL - 23 IS - 3 SP - 1379 PB - MDPI AN - OPUS4-56953 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -