A Nondestructive Approach for Elastic Property Assessment of Solid Materials Using Mechanical Impulse Excitation and Finite Element Modal Analysis

This study introduces a straightforward and effective dynamic approach for the nondestructive evaluation of the elastic properties of solid materials. Similar to other dynamic methods such as resonance ultrasound spectrometry and the impulse excitation technique, our method involves two primary steps: first, experimentally determining the specimen's natural frequencies, and second, numerically computing the elastic properties. Superior to the existing methods, our method greatly simplifies the experimental process, reducing the stringent requirements associated with specimen preparation, positioning, and the methods of vibration excitation and detection. We employ an inverse technique using finite element modal analysis to calculate the specimen's elastic properties, which yields highly precise and accurate estimations. The efficacy of our method was validated against the established ultrasound pulse-echo testing, a sound speed-based dynamic method. For instance, when measuring an aluminum specimen’s Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio, the discrepancies between our method and the ultrasound pulse-echo testing were merely -0.63% and 1.91%, respectively. Similarly, the differences for shear modulus and bulk modulus were -0.44% and -3.14%, respectively. Furthermore, our method can measure the elastic properties of both regular and irregular shapes, extending its versatility and applicability across various geometries. In summary, our proposed method offers a simpler and more cost-effective solution for determining the elastic properties of solid materials while maintaining a similar level of accuracy and reliability to that of established methods.

Embargo status: Restricted until 06/2025. To request the author grant access, click on the PDF link to the left.