Recent Progress in Ultrasonic Nondestructive Characterization of Material Microstructures: A Review

Abstract

The scattering and attenuation of high frequency ultrasonic wave in polycrystalline materials such as metal and ceramics have implication of material microstructures. Many studies have recently developed sophisticate forward models that corelate ultrasonic scattering and attenuation with different types of polycrystalline materials. Furthermore, some studies have proposal effective methodologies to nondestructively determine polycrystal microstructures from ultrasonic measurements, namely solving the inversion problems. Its applications cover titanium alloys in aerospace, carbon steels in transportation, additively manufactured components and machineries, to name a few. This paper reviews recent progress in ultrasonic nondestructive characterization of metal microstructures, including voids, grain size, crystallographic texture and grain boundary.