A unified theory of the simultaneous electromagnetic excitation and detection of ultrasonic waves travelling in the through‐thickness direction in conducting sheets in the presence of a static magnetic field is presented. What to our knowledge are the highest‐frequency room‐temperature measurements of this type are described for aluminium sheets of thickness as low as 20 μm for frequencies up to 120 MHz. Maxwell’s equations are solved for the geometry of a planar current sheet above a conducting sheet with sinusoidal time variation. It is shown how, from the solution of a single fourth‐order differential equation for the magnetic vector potential, the coupled electromagnetic and elastic wave problem can be solved analytically. The effective transfer impedance is evaluated, a measure of the ultimate efficiency of the combined excitation and detection process. At acoustic resonance its amplitude is inversely proportional to the sum of the ultrasonic attenuation of the sample and the attenuation arising from...

Resonant electromagnetic excitation and detection of ultrasonic waves in thin sheets

The acoustic wave generation in a specimen irradiated by a pulsed microwave is predicted theoretically. The specimen is a viscoelastic rod inserted into a wave guide. The model is based on Maxwell’s equations, heat equation and thermoviscoelasticity theory. Computations show the presence of temperature oscillations due to the electromagnetic interferences in the irradiated rod if its electromagnetic absorption is low. An experimental method to infer indirectly the detailed behavior of microwave-generated acoustic waves in polymer rods, including the influence of electromagnetic wave reflection at the rod ends, is presented. The method consists of measuring the oscillations in the particle acceleration detected at the end of the rod that are induced by variations in the polymer rod length. The oscillations are caused by changing electromagnetic standing-wave conditions within the rod. It is found that these oscillations are in agreement in period, amplitude, and phase, with independent values of the complex dielectric constant and complex acoustic slowness of the polyvinyl chloride samples used in the study.

Acoustic waves generated by pulsed microwaves in viscoelastic rods: Modeling and experimental verification

The theory of the anomalous skin effect in metals is used in order to study the direct generation of ultrasound by electromagnetic radiation incident on a metal surface, in the absence and in the presence of a magnetic field. The non-monotonic behaviour of the acoustic flux observed experimentally, as a function of the magnetic field can be explained within the framework of the free-electron model assuming that the electrons are scattered diffusely from the metal surface. The reason for this behaviour is traced to the variation of the relative phases of the collision drag force on the bulk ions and that on the surface with increasing magnetic field. The relations between existing theories of direct generation of ultrasound have been investigated within both the free-electron approximation and the effective-mass theory. We conclude that, besides the collision drag force, the Lorentz force and the Bragg reaction force, an additional ‘deformation’ force acts upon the positive ions. We find that the ...

Theory of electromagnetic generation of acoustic waves in metals

Electromagnetic generation of sound in metals in a magnetic field

The amplitude of a second harmonic wave (SHW) generated from Joule heating as a heat source in organic conductor β-(BEDT-TTF)2IBr2 is analyzed as a function of the magnetic field strength and its orientation with respect to the plane of the layers. Angular oscillations of the SHW amplitude are correlated with the angular changes of in-plane conductivity that arise from the periodic dependence of charge carriers velocity on the field orientation. It was found that the nonlinear effect of wave generation leads to a shift between the position of the peaks of the wave amplitude and in-plane conductivity. This allows an important information on the parameter values of organic conductors as well as wave velocity to be obtained. Magnetic field dependence shows that the wave is not strongly attenuated with increasing field and might give insights on the interactions between the electromagnetic, temperature and acoustic oscillations. We found that these observations are completely different compared to those of linear acoustic wave generation. It has been shown that the necessary conditions for observing the nonlinear acoustic wave generation are fulfilled in a wide range of fields and angles that allow the acoustic properties of organic conductors to be studied in detail.

D. E. Chimenti

Papers

Nonlocal electromagnetic generation of acoustic waves in aluminum films