Evaluation on micro cracks in ceramic bearing balls by using the floating resonance of surface acoustic waves

Although resonant ultrasound spectroscopy is useful for testing the surface and the inside of objects, the acoustic properties (resonance frequency, mode amplitude ratio, attenuation, etc.) are disturbed by the contact made with supports and transducers. To eliminate this disturbance, we developed the floating resonance (FR) method in which the acoustic properties of bulk and surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are evaluated using laser ultrasound after floating the objects, thus avoiding the contact with the supports and transducers. In this work we applied the FR method to detect artificial flaws on the surface of ceramic bearing balls and a slit as shallow as 50 μm was successfully detected from the attenuation of SAWs after multiple round trips with as many as 20 turns.