Error analysis of the impulse excitation of vibration measurement of acoustic velocities in steel samples

The knowledge of the acoustic velocities in solid materials is crucial for several nondestructive evaluation techniques such as wall thickness measurement, materials characterization, determination of the location of cracks and inclusions, TOFD, etc. The longitudinal wave velocity is easily measured using ultrasonic pulse-echo technique, while a simple and accurate way to measure the shear wave speed would be a useful addition to the commonly available tools.In this work we use the impulse excitation of vibration, a very well known technique to determine the elastic constants of solid materials from the measurement of the lowest resonant frequencies excited by an impulse, to determine both longitudinal and transversal sound velocities for steel samples. Significant differences were found when comparing the longitudinal wave velocity with the one determined by a standard pulse-echo technique. Part of the difference was tracked back to the use of analytical formulas for the resonant frequencies, and corrected through the use of accurate numerical simulations. In this paper the systematic analysis of the possible error sources is reported.