APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS VOLUME 72, NUMBER 9 2 MARCH 1998

Laser generation of ultrasound using a modulated continuous wave

laser diode
S. G. Pierce,a) B. Culshaw, and Q. Shan
Optoelectronics Division, Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde,
Glasgow G1 1XW, United Kingdom
~Received 27 October 1997; accepted for publication 24 December 1997!
A modulated continuous wave diode laser was used to generate ultrasonic Lamb waves in a thin
steel plate. No surface damage was evident on the sample, a feature due to the low power density
of the acoustic source in contrast to the high power pulsed laser systems usually employed for
laser-ultrasound generation. The Lamb waves were monitored using a surface bonded optical fiber
interferometer whose output was correlated with the pseudorandom binary sequence used to
modulate the laser diode. In this fashion, it was possible to record a time domain history of the
ultrasonic propagation in the sample. © 1998 American Institute of Physics.
@S0003-6951~98!01009-2#

Laser-generated ultrasound has been extensively investi- Figure 1 illustrates the experimental setup. Light from a
gated as a tool for nondestructive materials evaluation and laser diode ~Coherent S-81-1000C-100T! was collimated us-
characterization.1 Attractive features of such a source include ing a microscope objective (320). The beam was tightly
the noncontact nature of the source combined with repeat- focused onto the surface of a steel sample of thickness 0.15
ability and the capability to generate a variety of acoustic mm to provide a small spot approximately 100 mm across.
modes ~e.g., longitudinal, shear, surface waves, and Lamb The laser diode operated at a wavelength of around 810 nm
waves!.1 The initial work carried out on acoustic generation and had a maximum cw output power of 1 W, thus the maxi-
from a laser pulse was presented by White2 using a pulsed mum surface power density was of the order of 104 W cm22,
ruby laser. Since then pulsed lasers have been used almost well below the ablation threshold for metals—typically
exclusively for laser-ultrasonic generation due to the fact that 107 W cm22. 1 Acoustic waves propagating in the sample
the generation efficiency is proportional to the laser pulse plate were monitored using a surface bonded optical fiber
energy.3 The disadvantage of high peak powers ~often in sensor arranged in a loop of diameter 20 mm around the
excess of 106 W! is the associated surface damage to generation spot. The acoustic pressure field caused a modu-
samples if the local power density is sufficient to cause lation in the optical phase in the fiber which was demodu-
plasma formation. Several techniques that act to reduce local lated using a sensitive wideband fiber optic Mach Zehnder
power densities and hence surface damage effects have been interferometer described in detail by Staszewski et al.8 The
developed. These include multiple array sources, air break- laser diode was modulated using a maximal linear code se-
down sources, and annular sources.4 An alternative philoso- quence (m sequence!9 of length 2047 bits generated using
phy to damage reduction is to dispense with the high peak MATLAB. A section of the code and its autocorrelation func-
power pulsed laser systems and instead to use a modulated tion is illustrated in Fig. 2. Note the maximum correlation
cw laser source for acoustic generation. Since the generation value of 2047 ~the code length! which occurred at zero lag
efficiency is substantially reduced, the use of sensitive
lock-in detection schemes is employed.1 This approach has
been successfully used to generate thermoelastic waves in
liquids5 and thin films.6 The disadvantage of cw modulation
arises in samples of finite dimension where reflections from
boundaries will produce a complicated acoustic interference
pattern. A more elegant modulation scheme which circum-
vents the standing wave problem produced from single fre-
quency cw modulation, is to employ the use of pseudoran-
dom noise modulation in combination with a correlation-
based detection technique. The use of pseudorandom binary
sequences ~PRBS! in photoacoustic and photothermal mea-
surements has been discussed in detail by Mandelis.7 In this
letter we present the successful laser generation of ultrasound
in a thin steel sample using a PRBS modulated InGaAsP
laser diode.

a!
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic mail: FIG. 1. Optical fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer used to detect laser-
s.g.pierce@eee.strath.ac.uk diode-generated ultrasound in a thin sample plate.

0003-6951/98/72(9)/1030/3/$15.00 1030 © 1998 American Institute of Physics

Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 72, No. 9, 2 March 1998
FIG. 2. Section of m sequence modulation code and its autocorrelation
function.
and the low correlation values at all other lags. The overall
effect of the code was to provide a series of impulses to the
sample plate which could effectively be averaged together
when monitored using a correlation detection system. The
code sequence was sampled at 1 MHz and passed to an ar-
bitrary function generator ~Hewlett-Packard 33120A! which
output the code burst at a repetition rate of 10 Hz to the drive
circuitry of the laser diode. Output signals from the fiber
interferometer were digitized using a Tektronix TDS420 os-
cilloscope sampling at 5 MHz and taking an average of 128
wave forms, from where the signal could be transferred to a
personal computer for subsequent storage and cross correla-
tion with the outgoing code sequence. Figure 3 shows the
actual optical output from the laser diode and the corre-
sponding response of the interferometer. It is apparent that
the restricted bandwidth of the laser diode driver caused a
small rounding on the rising edges of the m sequence code,
and that the acoustic signal amplitude was sufficiently low
such that no obvious time domain signal from the interfer-
ometer output was observed ~excepting noise!. In order to
observe the laser-generated acoustic signature, the cross cor-
relation between the interferometer output signal and the op-
tical drive was formed. This is illustrated in Fig. 4. The up-
per trace showing the whole correlation function exhibits a
FIG. 3. Upper trace shows optical output from laser diode, lower trace
illustrates output from fiber-optic interferometer.
Pierce, Culshaw, and Shan 1031
FIG. 4. Cross correlation of interferometer output and modulation code
showing ultrasonic Lamb wave generation. Lower trace shows detail of
acoustic signal.
high correlation in the region of zero microseconds. The
lower trace zooms in on this portion of the correlation func-
tion to reveal the detected acoustic wave. The dominant fea-
ture of the signal is the arrival of a highly dispersive wave at
a time of 11.5 ms, preceded by a small step at 3 ms. In order
to understand the features of the recorded signal it is neces-
sary to be familiar with the rudiments of Lamb wave
propagation.10 Lamb waves are guided elastic modes that
propagate in plate structures in directions parallel to the plate
boundary surfaces. The governing waveguide parameter is
the product of Lamb wave frequency and plate thickness @the
frequency–thickness product FT#. For high values of FT a
large number of Lamb wave modes are possible. These
modes can have widely different phase velocities and may
well exhibit considerable phase velocity dispersion as a func-
tion of FT. For values of FT below a material dependent
critical value ~typically FT,1 MHz mm for steel!, only two
modes are allowed; the fundamental symmetric (S 0 ), and the
fundamental antisymmetric (A 0 ). It can be shown10 that
when the acoustic wavelength considerably exceeds the plate
thickness, that the phase velocities of the S 0 and A 0 modes
are given by
c p S05 A E
r ~ 12 y 2 !
, ~1!
c p A 0 5 A2 p f h A
4 E
3 r ~ 12 y 2 !
, ~2!
valid only for l@h. E is Young’s modulus, n is Poisson’s
ratio, r is density, f is frequency, and 2h is the plate thick-
ness. It is apparent that the S 0 mode propagates nondisper-
sively and hence the group velocity c g S 0 is identical to the
phase velocity c p S 0 . In contrast, the A 0 mode exhibits strong
velocity dispersion as a function of FT. It can be
demonstrated10 that the group velocity c g A 0 52c p A 0 . Taking
typical values for steel of E5210 GPa, r 57800 kgm23, and
y 50.29, we obtain a S 0 velocity of c p S 0 55420 ms21, and
an A 0 group velocity of c g A 0 51720 ms21 at a frequency of
0.5 MHz ~the highest frequency component expected from
the PRBS code sequence sampled at 1 MHz!. The character-
1032 Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol. 72, No. 9, 2 March 1998 Pierce, Culshaw, and Shan

istics of the ultrasonic wave form depicted in Fig. 4 are now
readily explained. The highly dispersive wave initially arriv-
ing at 11.5 ms corresponds to the arrival of the highest A 0
mode frequency component at '0.5 MHz with a velocity of
1740(640) ms21 in close agreement with the predicted
value. Since lower frequency components have a lower
propagation velocity, they arrive at successively later times
as is evident from the progressively lower frequency content
of the wave extending out to 80 ms. The step feature at 3 ms
probably corresponds to the S 0 arrival although the indicated
velocity of 6670(640) ms21 is considerably higher than the
theoretical prediction.
We have demonstrated the successful laser generation of
ultrasound in a thin steel sample using a modulated cw laser
diode source. The local power density ~of order
104 W cm22! of the focused laser beam was sufficiently low
to cause no damage to the sample plate but precluded the
direct time domain observation of acoustic pulses within the
sample. Using a PRBS modulation applied to the laser bias
current, ultrasonic Lamb waves were detected in the steel
plate using a surface bonded optical fiber sensor, whose out-
put was cross correlated with the input modulation code. We
believe that this technique offers a promising alternative
laser-ultrasonic source that possesses the advantage of mini-
mal surface damage in comparison to the more widely used
high powered pulsed laser sources.
1
C. B. Scruby and L. E. Drain, Laser Ultrasonics: Techniques and Appli-
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223–324.
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R. M. White, J. Appl. Phys. 34, 3559 ~1963!.
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A. C. Tam, Rev. Mod. Phys. 58, 381 ~1986!.
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329 ~1993!.
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Y. Kohanzadeh, J. R. Whinnery, and M. M. Carroll, J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
57, 67 ~1975!.
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2847 ~1990!.
7
A. Mandelis, IEEE Trans. Ultrason. Ferroelectr. Freq. Control 33, 590
~1986!.
8
W. J. Staszewski, S. G. Pierce, K. Worden, W. R. Philp, G. R. Tomlinson,
and B. Culshaw, Opt. Eng. ~Bellingham! 36, 1877 ~1997!.
9
R. C. Dixon, Spread Spectrum Systems ~Wiley, New York, 1976!, pp.
53–92.
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tions ~Plenum, New York, 1967!, pp. 67–121.