Matching Spectroscopy with the Ultrasonic Polar Scan for Advanced NDT of Composites

The Pulsed Ultrasonic Polar Scan (P-UPS) is a powerful technique for characterizing anisotropic materials like fiber reinforced plastics. A time-domain analysis of the ultrasonic signals yields amplitude and time-of-flight polar diagrams that provide a fingerprint of the local stiffness properties. Though, this simple analysis ignores a lot of information contained in the ultrasonic signals. In this study, we propose to use the P-UPS technique in combination with the spectroscopic analysis of broadband pulses, to obtain plane wave transmission spectra for all in-plane polar angles. This allows us to combine on one hand the strengths of the P-UPS technique, that does not require a priori knowledge about the sample anisotropy, and on the other hand the frequency-domain analysis that utilizes information contained in the broadband pulses.