Characterization of Roll-Cladded Aluminum Plates With Laser-Based Surface-Acoustic-Wave Measurements

Abstract We investigated roll-cladded aluminum structures consisting of a layer of Al4045 on Al3003 with a non-destructive laser-ultrasound technique. We determined the thickness of the cladding layer based on the dispersion of the fundamental guided wave propagating along the surface. We analyzed eight surfaces, with cladding thicknesses ranging from 0 to approximately 400μm The inversion of the dispersion data to obtain the thickness yielded in consistent results, which we compare to reference values obtained from micrographs. For the optimization procedure we allowed the material properties to be free parameters, but constrained them to be equal for all samples.