Measurement of the intrinsic attenuation of longitudinal waves in anisotropic material from uncorrected raw data

•Enhanced measurement approach to determine the intrinsic longitudinal wave attenuation in anisotropic material.•The approach relies on the mapping of the ultrasonic beam transmitted through anisotropic slabs.•Apparent energy loss corrections of the raw data are not required and the data processing is very simple.

Among the physical parameters characterising the interaction of the ultrasonic beam with its supporting medium, ultrasonic attenuation is an important input parameter to simulate wave propagation and defect-beam phenomena. The measurement of the intrinsic attenuation in anisotropic material however is a difficult task. The paper presents an approach to determine intrinsic attenuation in anisotropic materials such as austenitic stainless steel welds and cladding. It deals with improvements on the initial device, based on measurements on two samples with different thicknesses (10 mm and 20 mm). A previous paper presented preliminary results with this new approach for isotropic materials.