Ultrasonic study of adhesive bond quality at a steel-to-rubber interface by using quadrature phase detection techniques

The quadrature phase detection technique was used to simultaneously monitor the phase and amplitude of a toneburst signal normally reflected from an adhesively bonded steel-to-rubber interface. The measured phase was found to show a positive shift for all bonded samples with respect to the disbonded state - the phase shift being larger for samples with weaker bonds, as manifested by smaller values of applied tensile loads at failure. A model calculation, which incorporates the concept of interfacial strength into the usual problem of wave propagation in multilayered media, was used to deduce a bond-quality parameter from an experimentally measured phase shift. This bond-quality parameter was found to be correlated with the tensile strength of the adhesive bonds at failure loads.