Abstract

Laser ultrasonics is a novel technique, now in very active development, that uses lasers for the generation and detection of ultrasound.¹ Ultrasound, as it is well known, allows one to inspect and characterize materials such as metals or polymers that are opaque to light. Laser ultrasonics circumvents a number of limitations associated with conventional ultrasonic techniques that use piezoelectric transducers for the generation and detection of ultrasound, such as contact and transducer orientation. Laser ultrasonics has been demonstrated in a steel mill on hot tubes in motion and on an aircraft in a maintenance hangar^2,3 and is being commercialized for the inspection of polymer-matrix composite materials used in aeronautics.

© 1997 Optical Society of America