Reflection and transmission at normal incidence onto air-saturated porous materials and direct measurements based on parametric demodulated ultrasonic waves.

The present work is related to the characterization of air-saturated porous media by using parametric demodulated ultrasonic waves. One uses two different powerful ultrasonic emitters working either at 47 kHz or at 162 kHz which are electronically amplitude modulated over the 200 Hz-4 kHz or 2 kHz-40 kHz bandwidths respectively. The demodulation process takes place in air, due to its nonlinearity enabling to generate audio range acoustical waves or alternatively low frequency ultrasonic waves which can be used to characterize porous materials in the reflection configuration at normal incidence. Some appropriate theoretical calculations are introduced for three configurations of interest, i.e. a porous slab, a porous layer mounted onto a rigid plate, and a porous half space, in the case of the equivalent-fluid model. Comparisons between theoretical modeling and experimental data are provided and prospective industrial applications are discussed.