Near-surface defect detection in additively manufactured components using laser induced phased arrays with surface acoustic wave crosstalk suppression

In-process inspection of the additive manufacturing process requires a technique that can provide reliable measurements given the extreme operating environments, the small size of the defects and the cyclic melting and heating of the material, caused by subsequently deposited layers. A remote and couplant-free ultrasonic inspection technique using bulk waves that can image near-surface defects could address these in-process inspection requirements. Laser induced phased arrays (LIPA) generate and detect ultrasound based on laser ultrasonics principles, while the array is synthesised in post-processing. However, when using LIPAs for inspection, the surface acoustic waves (SAWs) interfere with the bulk wave modes giving rise to crosstalk and artefacts, which makes near-surface defect imaging difficult. This work experimentally validates and compares five techniques for SAW suppression: amplitude thresholding, mean waveform subtraction, principal component subtraction, frequency-wavenumber filtering, and phase coherence imaging. SAW suppression is demonstrated in ultrasonic images of transverse waves based on 71-element LIPA data synthesised on a Ti-6Al-4V directed energy deposition-arc (DED-Arc/Ti6Al4V) sample with a ∼1 mm diameter side drilled hole, located at ∼4 mm below the inspected surface. The reported results show that the principal component subtraction approach achieved the highest ‘signal-to-crosstalk ratio’ improvement of 16 dB, while successfully suppressing the SAW.