Mode Selectivity of SH Guided Waves by Dual Excitation and Reception Applied to Mode Conversion Analysis

Shear horizontally (SH) guided waves, generated by periodic permanent magnet arrays, have been used previously in nondestructive evaluation of metal plates and pipes. When an SH guided wave interacts with a defect or a change in sample thickness, the incident SH wave may undergo mode conversion. Analysis of mode conversion is complicated, due to the interference of several propagating modes in the received signal that can often temporally overlap. This paper proposes a mode selection technique to help understand the interaction of SH guided waves with changes in sample thickness. Using an understanding of the propagation characteristics of the guided waves, SH guided waves are sequentially generated and detected on both surfaces of the plate, capturing four distinct waveforms. By superposition of the detected signals, symmetric modes can be clearly separated from antisymmetric modes in the processed received signals. For this method to work well, the transducers used should have very similar responses and be precisely positioned on exactly opposite positions either side of the plate. Finite element simulations are also performed, mirroring the experimental measurements, and the results correlate well with the experimental observations made on an 8-mm-thick plate with a region of simulated wall thinning machined into the sample.