Metal additive manufacturing (AM) is an innovative manufacturing technology that uses a high-power laser for the layer-by-layer production of metal components. Despite many achievements in the field of AM, few studies have focused on the nondestructive characterization of microstructures, such as grain size and porosity. In this study, various microstructures of additively manufactured metal components were characterized non-destructively using linear/nonlinear ultrasonic techniques. The contributions of this study are as follows: (1) presenting correlation analyses of various microstructures (grain size and texture, lack of fusion, and porosity) and ultrasonic properties (ultrasonic velocity, attenuation, and nonlinearity parameters), (2) development of nondestructive microstructural characterization techniques for additively manufactured components; and (3) exploring the potential for the online monitoring of AM processes owing to the nondestructive nature of the proposed technique. The performance of the proposed technique was validated using additively manufactured samples under varying laser beam speed conditions. The characteristics of the target microstructures characterized using the proposed technique were consistent with the results obtained using destructive optical microscopy and electron back-scattered diffraction methods.

The ultrasonic nonlinear parameter is measured from the amplitudes of the harmonic frequency components generated during the propagation of ultrasonic waves in a material. There are two definitions for this parameter: absolute and relative. The absolute parameter is defined by the displacement amplitude; however, it is difficult to measure because of the very small displacement amplitude of the harmonic components. Conversely, the relative parameter is defined by the amplitude of the detected signal, regardless of displacement. Many researchers use the relative parameter because it is easier to measure, although it is only available for a relative comparison of different materials. However, it has not yet been verified that the ratio of the relative parameters between two materials is identical to that of the absolute parameters. In this study, we make it clear that the ratio of the relative parameters is inherently not identical to that of the absolute parameters, but that they can be identical to each other by compensating for material-dependent differences, such as detection-sensitivity and wavenumber. For verification, the absolute and relative parameters were measured for two different materials. The results showed that the ratios of absolute and relative parameters were in good agreement after compensation.

The incident second harmonic wave is a problematic issue for the precise measurement of the acoustic nonlinearity parameter. This paper proposes a compensation method to remove the effect of the incident second harmonic component in the measurement of the absolute acoustic nonlinearity parameter using the calibration method. For this, the second harmonic component detected by the receiving transducer is considered as the sum of the component due to material nonlinearity and the component included in the incident signal and a numerical calculation model is developed as a function of the propagation distance. In the model, the factors related to the material nonlinear parameter and the magnitude of the incident second harmonic component are unknown and these are determined by finding a value that best matches the experimental data according to the change in the propagation distance; compensation for the incident second harmonic component is then achieved. The case where the phase of the second harmonic wave due to material nonlinearity is opposite to that of the fundamental wave is also considered. To verify the validity of the proposed method, fused silica and aluminum alloy Al6061-T6 specimens with different thicknesses corresponding to the propagation distance are tested. The experimental results show that the nonlinear parameters changed significantly according to the propagation distance before compensation but were very stable after compensation. Additionally, the average values of the nonlinear parameter are 11.04 in the fused silica, which is within the literature value range (10.1 to 12.4), and that for the Al6061-T6 is 6.59, which is close to the literature value range (4.5 to 6.12).

The absolute acoustic nonlinearity parameter β is defined by the displacement amplitudes of the fundamental and second-order harmonic frequency components of the ultrasonic wave propagating through the material. As β is a sensitive index for the micro-damage interior of industrial components at early stages, its measurement methods have been actively investigated. This study proposes a laser-ultrasonic detection method to measure β. This method provides (1) the β measurement in a noncontact and nondestructive manner, (2) inspection ability of different materials without complex calibration owing to direct ultrasonic displacement detection, and (3) applicability for the general milling machined surfaces of components owing to the use of a laser interferometer based on two-wave mixing in the photorefractive crystal. The performance of the proposed method is validated using copper and 6061 aluminum alloy specimens with sub-micrometer surface roughness. The experimental results demonstrated that the β values measured by the proposed method for the two specimens were consistent with those obtained by the conventional piezoelectric detection method and the range of previously published values.

The absolute acoustic nonlinearity parameter, which is defined by displacement amplitudes of the fundamental and second-order harmonic waves transmitted through a medium, has been known to be positive for the diagnosis of structural degradation. It can be measured using piezo-electric transducers with calibration to obtain transfer functions that convert the electrical amplitude into the acoustic displacement amplitude. Because the amplitude of the harmonic component is small, a narrowband signal is typically used to increase the reliability of harmonic detection. However, for calibration, a broadband signal in the form of a pulse is preferred because the transfer function at both the fundamental and harmonic frequencies should be obtained simultaneously. Here, we propose a calibration technique that uses a narrowband instead of a broadband signal to measure acoustic nonlinearity parameters. Firstly, we explain the theoretical reason for selecting an identical time width for all received signals in the conventional technique and then introduce the advantages of the proposed technique. Next, to validate the proposed technique, transfer functions obtained using the proposed and conventional techniques were compared for a fused silica sample with a lithium niobate crystal transducer, confirming the close agreement. To demonstrate the versatility of applications in terms of the transducer and material type, four combinations were tested by adding a lead zirconate titanate transducer and an aluminum alloy, showing good concordance regardless of the material or the transducer type. Finally, to validate the effectiveness of the proposed technique in measuring the absolute acoustic nonlinearity parameters, fused silica was measured using both techniques. The result from the conventional technique was 10.87, while the result from the proposed technique was 11.49, a difference of only 5.70%.

In the nonlinear ultrasonic technique, the measurement of the absolute acoustic nonlinearity parameter is employed to obtain quantitative material nonlinearity. In the piezoelectric method, this measurement involves two processes: calibration and harmonic measurements. In the calibration process, a transfer function is obtained, and distortion of the propagating wave is measured in the harmonic measurement. In the conventional method for this measurement, a narrowband pulser is typically used for the harmonic measurement, while a broadband pulser is used for the calibration measurement. In this study, we propose a technique that utilizes a narrowband pulser for both harmonic and calibration measurements. First, we introduced the proposed method to measure the transfer function in the calibration measurement employing the narrowband pulser. Then, we compared the results of the transfer functions and the absolute acoustic nonlinearity parameters obtained using both a narrowband and broadband pulser in the calibration. Based on the experimental results, we found that the results obtained using both the proposed and conventional methods are highly similar, confirming the validity of the proposed measurement technique. In conclusion, even though we exclusively employ the narrowband pulser, we can accurately measure the absolute nonlinearity parameter, leading to a reduction in the required measurement equipment.