Results in Physics (Dec 2021)

Analysis on ultrasonic waves generated in anisotropic carbon fiber reinforced plastic laminate by laser incidence from various directions

  • Zeping Zhang,
  • Osamu Saito,
  • Yoji Okabe

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 31
p. 104927

Abstract

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Laser-ultrasonic waves are used in nondestructive inspections because they can be excited on arbitrarily shaped surfaces by irradiation of a pulsed laser from a distance. During the non-contact scanning of a laser, the waveform of excited ultrasonic wave is changed because the incident angle varies substantially. The change of the waveform will be more obvious for carbon fiber reinforced plastics (CFRP) laminates that have anisotropic properties. In order to guarantee the inspection, in this paper, we investigated the generation of ultrasonic waves in CFRP laminates by a laser irradiation with various incident angles and azimuth angles. Firstly, we constructed a simulation model: the thermal force field caused by the laser absorption is derived from a heat conduction equation, and it is introduced into an FEM software for analyzing the propagation behavior of generated ultrasonic waves. Then, the simulation result is compared with an experiment result. Through the FEM analysis, we found that the amplitude of the excited waves has an obvious directivity because of the strong anisotropy in the thermo-elastic property of the CFRP. In addition, the change in propagation behavior in the case of a small incident angle of 30° was found to be inconspicuous. However, when the incident angle of the laser beam is larger than 60°, the directivity pattern changes depending on the azimuth angle. Thus, it is important to control the incident angle and direction when a laser ultrasonic inspection is applied to CFRP structures.

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