Noncontact material evaluation for characterization and wear detection using laser-generated ultrasound and interferometric detection

This paper describes an all optical non-contact technique to determine material properties in a mechanical structure. Using optical generation of ultrasound and interferometric optical detection to determine the dispersion curves for acoustic (Lamb) waves, readily available numerical algorithms have produced values of Young's Modulus and Poisson ratio with confidence limits of a few percent. The approach may be applied to inspection regions with dimension in the range microns to centimetres