Elastic Characterization of Orthotropic Composite Materials from Ultrasonic Inspection through Non-Principal Planes

Transmission of bulk ultrasonic waves through materials immersed in water is a well appropriated method to measure the stiffness matrix of anisotropic composite materials. This matrix can be deduced from velocities measurements by simple [1,2,3] or double transmission [4,5] or from amplitudes of double reflected bulk waves [4]. All these methods are working very well for unidirectional composites when transverse isotropy is assumed and the stiffness matrix has only five independent elastic constants.</p