The determination of the elastic constants of isotropic solids by means of transient thermal surface gratings

Starting from the coupled thermoelastic equations, an analytic formula is obtained for the surface deformation of a semi-infinite homogeneous and isotropic solid in an impulsive stimulated scattering (ISS) experiment. The surface ripple consists of a transient diffusive grating and a standing Rayleigh wave. The time evolution of the diffusive part directly reveals the thermal diffusivity. The oscillatory part then reveals the elastic properties, and explicit formulae are presented for retrieving the elastic moduli as a function of the frequency and amplitude of the standing Rayleigh wave. The analytic formulae not only allow to avoid time-consuming and delicate numerical integration but they also demonstrate the uniqueness of the inversion from signal to material parameters and offer direct insight into the error propagation. The formulae are applied to real experimental data, illustrating the strength and the limitations of the ISS technique.status: publishe