On the calculation of laser-generated ultrasound pulses

Abstract

The generation of ultrasound pulses with pulsed lasers has received considerable attention in recent years. Promising applications are to nondestructive evaluation and to materials characterization, where it is convenient to have a broad-band source requiring no contact with the sample. Quantitative applications in nondestructive evaluation require theoretical calculations incorporating realistic sample and source properties. This has, until recently, dictated approaches which were very computation-intensive. After the results obtained through these approaches are reviewed, we will describe and illustrate a very recent formulation which enables such calculations to be accomplished more easily. Numerical results will be presented to demonstrate the advantages of this approach, with emphasis on the effects of finite source dimensions, and on the initial waveform. We also show that this approach may be used to investigate surface-wave generation. © 1990 Plenum Publishing Corporation.