Measurement of third-order elastic constants using thermal modulation of ultrasonic waves

Third-order elastic constants (TOEC) play an important role in nonlinear material characterization, but measurements of TOEC are laborious with large error margins. This Letter presents the equations of wave velocity changes caused by homogeneous temperature variation and uniaxial stress in isotropic media and the expression of TOEC in terms of thermally induced velocity change and thermal strain. TOEC of an aluminum sample were experimentally determined by measuring ultrasonic wave velocity changes in the uniaxial loading test and the thermal modulation test. Experimental results showed good agreement between the two test methods. Owing to the simple test setup and high measurement sensitivity, the thermal modulation test is a potential experimental method to determine TOEC and absolute acoustic nonlinearity parameters.