Analysis of the Generation of Guided Waves Using Finite Sources: An Experimental Approach

Abstract

The wedge method of generating guided waves in isotropic layers, originally analyzed theoretically and experimentally by Viktorov and colleagues [1–2], has recently been extended to encompass generally anisotropic layers and transducers with arbitrary pressure distributions [3–4]. One result of these analyses was that there is a continuous dependence of the excitation amplitude of any given mode on the incident angle of the wedge. In [3–4], explicit expressions were given for the excitation amplitude as a function of incident angle; given the transducer size, pressure profile and frequency. In this paper, predictions in [3–4] are tested against laboratory experiments to asses their validity.