Robust non-destructive measurement system for extraction of ultrasonic wave parameters using the prism technique

In this paper we propose a measurement system to evaluate the elastic constants of materials using only one experiment. This measurement system is based on the ultrasonic prism technique for the nondestructive measurement of both compressional and shear waves, and on the matching pursuit combined with genetic algorithms (MP-GA) to estimate these two backscattered echo waves. Under this framework, samples are realized in prism-shaped forms using a special molding box. Then, the MP-GA method is used to derive the time of flight of the measured data by a deconvolution process. The backscattered echoes are constructed using a parametric model-based vector for which the corresponding parameters are closely related to the physical properties of the ultrasonic signal propagating through the investigated material. The effectiveness of the measurement system is approved by estimating the elastic properties of homogeneous and non-homogeneous solid materials. Further, several tests have shown that this measurement system works well even for low SNR levels.