Application of the laser generated focused-Lamb wave for non-contact imaging of defects in plate

The laser generation method of focused-Lamb wave is expected to have high defect-detection ability with advantages of non-contact testing. In this method, the laser beam is illuminated on the surface of the object through an arrayed-arc slit, and then the energy of the generated Lamb wave is concentrated on the focus point of arc. This focusing effect enables the concentration of higher wave intensity on the focus with better S/N ratio of signal, and has better spatial resolution compared to the conventional line arrayed method. This paper describes a 2-D imaging system using this laser generated, focused-Lamb wave combined with its detection by the air-coupled transducer. This technique is fully non-contact so it can be easily applied for the automatic inspection. The effectiveness of the proposed method was verified by experiments on a 1-mm thick aluminum plate with artificial drill-hole defect with diameters of 1 mm. The 2-D image of was constructed by scanning and the result showed that the location and size of defects were clearly detected.