Visco-elastic constant recovery in the absence of known material symmetry

TLDR: In this paper, the authors presented initial results for determining the plane of symmetry of an orthotropic material and a monoclinic material using contact ultrasonic measurements of small specimens.

Abstract: In many cases, full knowledge of the material properties is required to facilitate design of a composite structure. Even in cases where the planes of symmetry of the material are nominally well defined, significant variation of these planes can exist due to fiber misorientation and other variation. This paper presents initial results for determining the plane of symmetry of an orthotropic material and a monoclinic material. The concept is extensible to a triclinic material and does not assume a-priori knowledge of the material. The experiments are performed using contact ultrasonic measurements of small specimens are easily extended to the visco-elastic properties of the same materials.