Use of the impulse technique for rapid texture evaluation in commercial tube and plate materials

A simple, rapid method for the nondestructive evaluation of texture in metal sheet of arbitrary thickness is presented. The method uses a recently developed technique to generate and receive Rayleigh waves on thick plates or Lamb waves on thin materials. The correlation of Rayleigh wave velocity data with calculated values based on elastic constant measurements and with X-ray pole figures is discussed in detail. The technique is applied to a variety of commercially important materials and geometries by the generation of "ultrasonic pole figures."