Quantitative detection of surface defect using laser-generated Rayleigh wave with broadband local wavenumber estimation

Laser ultrasonic technology has been widely used in surface defect detection attribute to its non-contact, non-destructive and high spatial resolution characteristics. This paper proposes a surface defect quantitative detection method using laser-generated Rayleigh wave with broadband local wavenumber estimation. In this method, considering the broadband characteristics of laser-generated Rayleigh wave, the broadband local wavenumber estimation is presented to achieve the defect imaging accurately, and then the defect geometric parameters are estimated based on image segmentation. A surface defect detection experiment using the laser ultrasonic detection system is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed method has superior imaging effect for vertical and inclined defects than the standing wave energy method or reflected wave energy method. Besides, the geometric parameters such as length, width, and inclination angle of a surface defect can be accurately identified by the proposed method, the errors of vertical defects are 1.6% in length and 4.0% in width respectively, as well as the maximum and minimum error of inclined defects are 5.0% and 1.28% in inclination angle respectively. The research results provide a potential application for the fast and non-destructive surface defect detection of metal structures.