Single-scan elastic property estimation in plates

It is shown that by rapid mapping of portions of the plate wave dispersion spectrum in anisotropic media reliable, unbiased estimation of elastic properties is possible. Highly focussed probes with a large angular spread make almost the entire angular range of phase-matched water coupling accessible in a single measurement. An incrementally based method of property estimation permits elastic stiffnesses to be estimated accurately with only minimal use of the highly redundant guided-wave data. Results of experiments on anisotropic plates show a difference of about 5% from contact acoustic estimates. The same measurement principle is applicable to air-coupled studies for plate elastic property estimation.