Ultrasonic Lamb wave method for sizing of spot welds

Abstract Two spot-welded thin sheets can be treated as two elastic waveguides coupled by a small common welded region. It is proposed to use Lamb waves to evaluate the quality of the weld. The feasibility of selecting the working frequency and mode number of the Lamb wave so that no resonance of the elastic vibrations appears in the weld region is considered analytically. This condition ensures a one-to-one correspondence between the mean diameter of the spot-weld region and the coefficient of transmission of the Lamb waves through it. A simple technique is suggested for determining the transmission coefficient and the scattering patterns of Lamb waves at the weld region. Experiments indicate that, to a satisfactory approximation, the wave transmission coefficient is proportional to the cube of the weld diameter. This allows a unique determination of the dimension of the welded region on the basis of the amplitude of the transmitted signal.