r/metallurgy • u/Sraomberts • 3d ago

Device to Help Determine Young’s Modulus (Non-Destructively)?

I'm looking for a way to accurately determine the Young’s modulus of a material from samples of ultrasonic horns without destroying them. The goal is to get precise material properties for modal analysis simulations.

Back in my college experimentation course, we had a lab where we determined the modulus of elasticity by attaching a piezo pickup to an isolated steel bar, striking it with a hammer, and using the resonance frequency to calculate the modulus.

Is there a commercial device that can do something similar? Something that can measure the time of flight of ultrasonic waves within a material to determine Young’s modulus? I’m not sure if such a device exists or if this method would even work, but I’d love to hear if anyone has experience with something like this.

I have company funding, so price isn’t a huge concern, but if I can find something under $10K, that would be awesome. Any recommendations?

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u/lazzarone 3d ago

Resonance ultrasound spectroscopy is what you want. Alamo Creek Engineering sells a basic system around your price point.

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u/Sraomberts 3d ago

Perfect! Exactly what I want! Thank you!

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u/percy135810 3d ago

Ultrasonic nde probes are used for this exact purpose, I'm not knowledgeable on suppliers but this site looks like a good start. If you get the wave speed from the time of flight, then you can just do a few more calculations to get the modulus of the material if you have the density and poisson ratio on hand. Here is a site with a couple of those formulas.

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u/awasteofgoodatoms 3d ago

Material response to sound waves as a concept is used for things like Reson3nt Ultrasound Spectroscopy, which utilizes parallelipiped samples held between two ultrasonic transducer. The response of the material and the anisotropic shape can then, in theory depending on material, measure the full elastic tensor of the material.

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u/Cydonia-Oblonga 3d ago

There is also Resonant ultrasound spectroscopy, or resonant beam technique.

Quite similar, but you dont hit it, instead you excite it with pure sinewaves and measure the response... And you sweep over a frequency range.

Your samples geometries need to be rather precise simple shapes (cubes, spheres, beams).

Not sure if there are commercial available stages. Ours are in house built.

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u/deuch 2d ago

ASTM: E494 Standard Practice for Measuring Ultrasonic Velocity in Materials

May be of use.