ABSTRACT
Sound speed and elastic constants measurements in solids and liquids are commonly performed using the ultrasound pulse-echo technique. Recent advances have expanded the use of this technique at numerous high pressure synchrotron beamlines and offline laboratories. However, the increased experimental throughput has revealed many limitations in existing software for handling the rapid measurement and the subsequent data-reduction. We report the development of a collection of computer programs for sound speed measurements using the ultrasound pulse-echo technique, compatible with stepped multi-frequency, as well as broadband-pulse, couplant-corrected methods. The programs provide a highly interactive graphical interface, enable efficient measurement, exploration and near real-time analysis of the ultrasound data, and contain features useful for working with samples under high pressure and/or high temperature. The included analysis programs can alleviate the time required for data reduction from hours to less than a minute, allowing users to make timely and informed decisions regarding the appropriate experimental parameters.
Acknowledgments
RH thanks Jonathan Simon, Innocent Ezenwa, Jing Yang, Anne Pommier, Rick Rowland, and Jennifer Jordan for testing the early versions of the data analysis programs and for providing useful feedback. RH thanks Maddury Somayazulu, Nenad Velisavljevic, and Jennifer Jordan for helpful discussions. The authors thank Curtis Kenney-Benson, Eric Rod, Arun Bommannavar for technical help with running the ultrasound experiments at 16-BM-B. This work was performed at HPCAT (Sector 16), Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Laboratory.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).