Determination of acoustic properties of PMMA using ultrasonic through-transmission technique

Abstract

In this paper, a non-destructive experimental method based on ultrasonic through-transmission technique has been developed to measure phase velocity and attenuation of both compressional and shear waves. Two pairs of transducers are used for the measurements, one with center frequency of 5 MHz, and the other pair with center frequency of 10 MHz. The method is tested on the homogeneous material Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA). The measurement results show a good agreement with published values in literature, hence, verifying the accuracy of the measurement method. In addition, the influences of temperature on acoustic parameters of the PMMA are experimentally studied and discussed. A small variation of approximately 3% is obtained for the phase velocity, whereas the temperature influence on the attenuation is considerably large, increasing 35% with an increase in temperature from 20℃ to 37℃. These acoustic properties and their temperature effects are essential and should be considered for designing ultrasound transducers