PROGRESS TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTOMATED ULTRASONIC NONLINEAR MEASUREMENT SYSTEM.

Ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation utilizing nonlinear acoustic measurements has been of increasing prevalence in modern research. Nonlinear measurements based on harmonic amplitude ratios, in the form of the B/A term, can be used to detect variations in higher order material properties. This study presents the efforts in establishing an automated setup and procedure to measure the nonlinear B/A parameter for a variety of materials. The setup utilizes through transmission, and digital signal analysis while carefully compensating for the transducers’ frequency response. Finally, results will be presented for the case of nonlinear wave propagation in fluids pertinent to chemical and biodiesel processing applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]