Texture in steel plates revealed by laser ultrasonic surface acoustic waves velocity dispersion analysis.

A photoacoustic, laser ultrasonics based approach in an Impulsive Stimulated Scattering (ISS) implementation was used to investigate the texture in polycrystalline metal plates. The angular dependence of the 'polycrystalline' surface acoustic wave (SAW) velocity measured along regions containing many grains was experimentally determined and compared with simulated results that were based on the angular dependence of the 'single grain' SAW velocity within single grains and the grain orientation distribution. The polycrystalline SAW velocities turn out to vary with texture. The SAW velocities and their angular variations for {110} texture were found to be larger than that the ones for {111} texture or the strong γ fiber texture. The SAW velocities for {001} texture were larger than for {111} texture, but with almost the same angular dependence. The results infer the feasibility to apply angular SAW angular dispersion measurements by laser ultrasonics for on-line texture monitoring.