Field-deployable measurement technique for absolute acoustic nonlinearity parameter values.

Over the past two decades, several researchers have demonstrated that changes in the acoustic nonlinearity parameter β can be related to changes in material properties due to mechanical and/or thermal degradation processes. Generally, a piezoelectric sensor-based detection method is used to measure changes in β values because it is operationally simpler than the complex capacitive detection method. However, this method is limited to measuring only relative changes in β values; whereas, the absolute β values of components in service often need to be measured in the field to quantify the degradation level.