The experimental observations of nonlinear effects of the primary Lamb waves have been reported. Firstly, the brief descriptions have been made for the nonlinear acoustic measurement system developed by Ritec. The detailed considerations for the acoustic experiment system established for observing of the nonlinear effects of the primary Lamb waves have been carried out. Especially, the analysis focuses on the time-domain responses of second harmonics of the primary Lame waves by employing a straightforward model. Based on the existence conditions of strong nonlinearity of the primary Lamb waves, the wedge transducers are designed to generate and detect the primary and secondary waves on the surface of an aluminum sheet. For the different distances between the transmitting and receiving wedge transducers, the amplitudes of the primary waves and the second harmonics on the sheet surface have been measured within a specified frequency range. In the immediate vicinity of the driving frequency, where the primary and the double frequency Lamb waves have the same phase velocities, the quantitative relations of second-harmonic amplitudes with the propagation distance have been analyzed. It is experimentally verified that the second harmonics of the primary Lamb waves do have a cumulative growth effect along with the propagation distance.
A technique for analyzing the nonlinear generation of the cumulative second har-monics of generalized Lamb modes in a layered planar structure is developed. A theoretical model for nonlinear generalized Lamb mode propagation in a layered planar structure has been established, based on a partial plane wave approach. The nonlinearity is treated as a second-order perturbation of the linear elastic response. This model reveals some interesting features of the physics of the cumulative second harmonic generation. Although Lamb mode propagation is dispersive in a layered structure, the results of this analysis show that the amplitudes of the second harmonics do accumulate with propagation distance under certain special conditions. On the basis of the boundary and initial conditions of excitation, the formal solution of the cumulative second harmonic has been derived. Using the formal solution, we have performed some numerical simulations and obtained the cumulative second harmonic field patterns, illus-trating the distortion effect along the propagation distance, as well as the dependence of the field patterns on the position of the excitation source.
