Using structure borne guided acoustic waves to investigate the elastic

behavior of soft porous materials

Poonam Khurana, Laurens Boeckx, Phillippe Leclaire & Walter Lauriks

Laboratorium voor Akoestiek en Thermische Fysica, Katholieke Universitiet Leuven, Belgium

ABSTRACT: A new experimental method for measuring the phase velocities of guided acoustic waves in soft
poroelastic layers is proposed. The newly proposed method is based on the generation of standing waves in a
porous sound absorbing material and on the spatial Fourier Transform of the displacement profile of the upper sur-
face. The displacement is measured with the help of a Laser Doppler vibrometer along a line corresponding to the
direction of propagation of plane surface waves. A sine sweep was chosen as broadband excitation signal to max-
imize the precision of the measurements. The spatial Fourier Transform provides the wave numbers and the phase
velocities are obtained from the relationship between wave number and frequency. The phase velocity of several
guided modes could be measured in highly porous foam saturated by air. The modes are also studied theoretically.

1 INTRODUCTION been expended upon modeling wave propagation inter-

The studies of the influence of a fluid loading on
the interaction of elastic waves with elastic solids are
important as the details of the behavior of the solid are
conveniently contained in it and can be easily extracted
from the reflected field in the fluid. Although a wide
range of experiments exists to examine the elastic coef-
ficients of all sorts of materials, rigidity measurements
in the area of poroelastic materials mostly are limited
to quasi-static regime measurements in the low audi-
ble frequency range with the additional requirement
of special shapes of sample materials. The concepts of
fluid-saturated porous media have gained much atten-
tion in past years. Biot (1956 a, b) initiated the theory
for elastic wave propagation in porous saturated mate-
rials which takes into account the motion of the fluid
and interconnected voids of a porous material and pre-
dicts the existence of three types of body waves, two
dilatational and one shear. Surface modes in liquid sat-
urated media are studied by a number of researchers
(Deresiewicz, 1962, Feng and Johnson, 1983, Kelders,
1998, Lauriks, 1998, Allard et al., 2003). Recently the
detection of guided waves in a layer of sound absorbing
porous material of finite thickness has been reported
at Kyoto by Boeckx et al. (2004).
Acoustic guided waves have been studied thor-
oughly for a wide range of interfaces at ultrasonic
frequencies and have become a primary tool in the
study of elastic material properties. From the view-
point of sound absorbing materials or outdoor sound
propagation the study of guided waves is mainly
focussed on their propagation through a fluid above
the boundary. In recent years, continued efforts have
action with anisotropic media. The interest has been
prompted by the recent expansion of the use of com-
posite materials in a wide variety of applications. Fiber
reinforced composites exhibit anisotropy on micro- as
well as macro- levels.
This paper presents the study of guided waves
in a transversely isotropic porous layer completely
immersed in a fluid. The theoretical study uses the
technique of transfer matrix.A new experimental setup
based on the generation of standing waves in a plate
of finite size is proposed for the measurement of
the phase velocities of porous layers in the Lamb
conditions.
2 FORMULATION OF PROBLEM
We consider a layer of transversely isotropic poro-
elastic solid (TIPS) completely immersed in fluid. An
incident wave in the upper fluid halfspace (FHS), mak-
ing an incident angle with the normal, strikes at
the interface z = 0 of the layer. One wave is reflected
back in the FHS and three quasi waves are transmitted
in the TIPS layer. These waves get reflected back and
the process goes on. Finally, there is a transmitted P
wave in the lower FHS.
The equations of motion corresponding to the TIPS
layer can be written as

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where is porosity, ij are the total stress components
acting on both the solid and fluid phases, pf is the pore
fluid pressure, f is the mass density of the fluid, is
the bulk density of the porous material, ui , Ui are the
components of the average displacements of the solid
and fluid phases respectively, W i = (U i u i ) are the
components of fluid-discharge velocity.
The viscodynamic operator F() represents the where a1 , a3 , b1 and b3 are the wave amplitudes.
friction between the solid and fluid phases. Substituting these expressions in the equations (1)
For circular pores, b i = ki , where and ki are the vis- a set of four equations, nontrivial solution of which is
possible only if
cosity and permeability of the pore fluid, respectively.
For cylindrical

pores, the permeability is given by
ki = a82 i , where a is the pore size and i is the shape
factor and its value is one for circular cylindrical pores.
The roots of the equation (4) are, in general, com-
plex. We denote these roots by q(n), n = 1, 2, , 6.
Three roots with positive real parts correspond to the
waves traveling in the positive z-direction (down going
waves) and the other three roots with negative real
parts correspond to the waves traveling in the negative
z-direction (up going waves). We order the six roots
q(n), n = 1, 2, , 6 such that q(1), q(2), q(3) corre-
where ber() and bei() are the real and imaginary spond to the three up going waves, namely quasi- Pf ,
parts of the Kelvins function and primes denote their quasi- Ps and quasi- SV waves respectively; and q(6),
derivatives. q(5) and q(4) correspond to the down going quasi- Pf ,
The c i in equations (1) are experimentally deter- quasi- Ps and quasi- SV waves respectively.
mined parameters that account for the fact that not The displacements associated with the up going and
all of the fluid moves in the direction of macroscopic down going body waves in TIPS layer are
pressure gradient because of the shape and orientation
of the interstitial cavities. In the case of straight pores,
these constants are unity.
The constitutive equations, following (Biot, 1962),

where f (n) are relative excitation factors.

3 TRANSFER MATRIX FOR THE LAYER

The expressions of displacements and stresses in the

The plane harmonic wave solutions of equations (1) layer can be written in a matrix form as
are written in the form

where V(z) is the displacement-stress field vector and

is defined by

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A is the column vector defined by A = [(f (1) + f (6)) With the use of equations (11) and (13), we can write
(f (1) f (6)) (f (2) + f (5)) (f (2) f (5)) (f (3) + f (4)) an Interface Matrix [].
(f (3) f (4))]T and [(z)] is a 6 6 matrix.
Specializing equation (6) to the upper and lower
faces of the layer, respectively, we get
Combining the equations (9), (16) & (10), we can
write

Eliminating the common amplitudes A, we obtain

where the matrix [T], given by the relation [T] =

[(0)][(L)]1 is acoustical transfer matrix character- Substituting the values of uz1 , wz1 , pf 1 from equation
izing a TIPS layer. The matrix [T] relates the stresses (17) into B.C.
and displacements at the upper surface of the layer to
those at the lower surface of the layer. The elements of
matrix [T] are given in Vashishth & Khurana (2004).
The acoustic field in upper FHS be described
by the vector V0 = [p0 ,u0 ]T . The surface impedance
Z = p0 /v0 , p0 being the pressure and v0 is the normal Solving we get the expression for Z
component of velocity in upper FHS.
In the lower fluid

This is the expression of surface impedance for a

transversely isotropic poroelastic plate completely
in fluid.
immersed in fluid. Reflection in the fluid can be given
The displacement and pressure are given by
by the expression

Equating the denominator of the reflection coefficient

to zero gives us the characteristic equation for the sur-
face waves propagating in a transversely isotropic plate
immersed in fluid. When Q = 0 i.e. the upper fluid
is absent, the equation reduces to the characteristic
4 BOUNDARY CONDITIONS AND SURFACE
equation for Rayleigh waves in TIPL/ fluid half space.
IMPEDANCE
As a simple case of the TIPS and to validate the
experimental method, we study an isotropic poroelas-
These are the boundary conditions at the first inter-
tic plate.
face fluid/TIPS and second interface TIPS/fluid
respectively.
5 EXPERIMENTAL CONFIGURATION

Guided waves are classically studied at ultrasonic fre-

quencies using short pulses generated by means of
laser excitation. Applications can be found in non-
destructive material testing. A time-frequency analysis
of the measured waveforms, usually detected by means
of a Laser-Doppler Vibrometer, yields the phase veloc-
ity dispersion curves. Very soft, highly porous sound
absorbing materials are characterized by high levels
of structural damping. In addition there is also atten-
uation due to the viscous and thermal interactions
between solid and fluid. Measurements and analysis

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schemes based on temporal contents of the waveforms
are therefore difficult to realize for these materials.
To circumpass the problems arising in the guided
wave excitation in poroelastic materials, a method
based on the generation of standing waves in the layer
is proposed.The principle is similar to that of the stand-
ing wave tube in which incident and reflected waves set
up a standing wave field. At ultrasonic frequencies this
principle was already used to measure surface waves
above periodical gratings by Kelders et al., 1998. The
key advantage of this method is that the signals need
not to be localized in time. The standing wave pattern
can be determined by scanning the surface along the
direction of propagation.A spatial Fourier transform of
the measured profile yields the periodic components
and provides the wave numbers kj of the different prop-
agating modes in the layer at each angular frequency
j . The phase velocity of each mode indexed j is then
given by Vj = kjj .
6 EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The experimental setup and the principle of the mea-
surement are analogous to those presented by Boeckx
et al. (2005) but now the sample is surrounded on
both sides by a fluid. Figure 1 presents the setup.
The frequencies, in which we are interested, range
from around 50 Hz up to around 10 kHz. An elec-
tro dynamical shaker was chosen to excite structure
related guided waves at these frequencies. The shaker
was fed a continuous sine function provided by the
function generator unit of a SRS SR780 2 channel sig-
nal analyzer. Plane waves are generated in the layer
by the use of a line source. The poroelastic layer was
mounted in symmetrical conditions with its two ends
glued to thick metal plates to achieve rigid endings at
which the incident waves are perfectly reflected. For
each driving frequency the amplitude and the phase
of the displacement profile of the surface were mea-
sured using a laser Doppler Vibrometer and the lock-in
amplifier of the signal analyzer.
(m) 180
Figure 1. Setup for measuring guided waves in a poroelastic
plate completely immersed by air.
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Copyright 2005 Taylor & Francis Group plc, London, UK
7 MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS
The phase velocity dispersion curves of an isotropic
poroelastic material were measured to validate the
proposed technique. The material parameters of the
sample are indicated in table 1. These parameters
were measured using standardized measurement tech-
niques described in literature Flow resistivity was
measured using the setup described by ISO-9053. The
measurement techniques of the tortuosity , the vis-
cous and thermal characteristic lengths  and  are
described respectively by Allard et al. (1994) and by
Leclaire (1996). The shear modulus of the material
was determined by Allard et al. (2005). An example of
a measured standing wave pattern at 600 Hz is given
in Figure 2. The lower part of the figure presents the
spatial Fourier transform. Two clear maxima can be
found in the amplitude spectrum of the standing wave
pattern. These correspond to two propagating modes.
With increasing frequency an increasing number of
modes are being observed in the amplitude spectrum
of the standing wave pattern. This corresponds to an
increasing number of maxima in the amplitude spec-
trum and also an increase of the periodicity in the
standing wave pattern. The real part of the phase veloc-
ity of each mode for a frequency interval between
80 Hz up to 25 kHz is presented in Figure 2. The figure
presents experimental evidence for the propagation of
three modes. The solid lines present calculations of the
phase velocities using the parameters indicated in table
1. The calculations were performed using an equiva-
lent analysis as presented by Boeckx et al. (2005), but
with the different symmetrical boundary conditions.
A characteristic equation is being setup at which the
propagating modes in the system have to obey. For an
elastic material, the characteristic equation for these
specific boundary conditions is the well known Lamb
dispersion equation which can be found for instance
in Ewing et al. (1957). Analogous to the modes propa-
gating in an elastic plate mounted in Lamb conditions,
the measured guided waves could be identified as the
A0 , S1 and A1 mode. The modes are also indicated in
Figure 3.
Table 1. Measured material parameters.
Tortuosity 1.4
Flow resistivity (Ns/m4 ) 130000
Viscous dimension  (m) 60
Thermal dimension 
Frame density (kg/m3 ) 59
Porosity 0.98
Shear modulus N (kPa) 125 + i6.2
Poisson ratio 0.3
Thickness t (m) 0.04
 8 CONCLUSIONS
100
A theoretical study of guided waves in air satu-
rated transversely isotropic porous layers completely
10-1 immersed in air has been presented. An experimental
method has been proposed to measure the structural
guided waves in plates in this configuration.The exper-
10-2 imental method was validated by the measurement of
the phase velocity dispersion curves of an isotropic
sound absorbing material mounted in Lamb condi-
10-3 tions. Analog to the elastic case symmetrical and anti
symmetrical modes were found. Clear experimental
evidence for three modes A0 , S0 and A1 was found. The
10-4
measured phase velocities compared very well with
0 20 40 60 80 100 the theoretical predictions taking into account the full
Biot model.
25
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