| Q: What can Buzz-o-sonic be used for? |
| A: Please see our Uses and Client Data pages. The primary use in research is to measure the Young's moduli and/or sound velocity of a variety of elastic materials such as ceramics, metals, and composites nondestructively. Organic materials such as wood and rubber and various coatings (plasma-sprayed, flame sprayed, HVOF...) can also be measured. In Quality Control, Buzz-o-sonic can be used to establish correlations between strength, porosity or bulk density and Young's modulus (or shear modulus) or a characteristic resonant frequency (flexural, torsional...). Weak parts can often be identified from unusual features in the power spectra. Click here for an example of how a weak tile was identified from differences in it's longitudinal frequencies.
NOTE: WE CAN DESIGN SYSTEMS TO YOUR NEEDS - high temperature, semi-automatic, go/no-go indicators for QC... |
| Q. Can Buzz-o-sonic be used to detect cracks and other defects? |
| A. Yes. Some defects show as frequency shifts, additional peaks, and peak splitting in the power spectra compared to a good sample. Internal friction is often increased dramatically also. Some testing and comparisons of good and bad parts are required first. Poor parts often have a lower than expected Young's modulus for a given bulk density (assuming that a strong enough correlation between bulk density and Young's modulus has been established). Click here to see an example of where Buzz-o-sonic was used to identify a weak ceramic part in a small sample set (6 parts). Click here to see an example of where Buzz-o-sonic was used to increase the mean and minimum strength of some ceramic filters by identifying and eliminating weaker parts. |
| Q. What size ranges can be measured? |
| A. It depends on the shape and elastic properties of the material, but we have tested materials from millimeters to meters. If you know roughly what the Young's modulus of the material is, contact us and we can determine the sizes measureable by Buzz-o-sonic. The thinnest sample tested so far (300 µ) is a ZrO2 electrolyte used in a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC). We can also custom design systems to meet your needs by using, for example, high frequency microphones or laser vibrometers to measure smaller or stiffer samples. |
| Q. Can green ceramics be measured? |
| A. Yes, in some cases1. Contact us for details. We can perform off-site or on-site tests also. |
| Q. Why is your system so low cost? |
| A. Two reasons: i) we are a small, lean business with low overheads, and ii) Buzz-o-sonic is designed specifically and carefully to run on standard computer equipment So, Buzz-o-sonic is low cost compared to other systems designed for measuring impulse excited solids. Buzz-o-sonic is a virtual instrument that has been developed over several years by an experienced ceramic scientist/engineer - not a software designer. Buzz-o-sonic was developed out of frustration with the high costs of the current hardware-based systems and by some of their limitations (add-ons required to plot the waveform and power spectra for example). We provide extensive product support including sample testing, advice on testing, and Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheets for calculating the elastic constants and for predicting resonant frequencies. The spreadsheet is updated frequently with the latest elasticity solutions. Updates and upgrades are released several times a year. Updates are free and significant discounts are offered on upgrades2. We listen to our users and incorporate suggested features wherever possible. Contact us for more details. |
| Q. I can´t imagine that you can obtain repeatable measurements using a microphone? |
| A. Yes we can! Don't take our word for it. Take the word of a world-class independent research laboratory - the High Temperature Materials Laboratory at Oak Ridge Nation Laboratories (ORNL). Researchers there tested and compared Buzz-o-sonic to three other techniques for measuring the Young's and shear moduli of several different materials. Here is an abstract from a paper they wrote1:
Four different experimental techniques, namely resonant ultrasound spectroscopy (RUS), impulse excitation (IE), nanoindentation (NI) and four-point bending (4PB) test were used to determine the Young's and shear moduli of 99.9% pure Al2O3, 7075 aluminum, 4140 steel and Pyrex glass. The results from the different tests are compared and statistically analyzed to determine the precision of each method and to estimate the significance of the differences among the four techniques. It was found that dynamic methods (RUS and IE) have superior precision and repeatability when compared to NI and 4PB for all four tested materials. It was also found that the differences between results of RUS and IE are not statistically significant, and that NI can be equally successfully used for determining Young's modulus of well-prepared, microstructurally homogenous and relatively hard materials. 4PB was found to have the lowest precision and repeatability among the four test methods. Note: Buzz-o-sonic was used to perform the impulse-excitation technique, IE, referenced in the above paper. 1Reprinted from Materials Science and Engineering A, Volume 368, Issues 1-2, 15 March 2004, E. Lara-Curzio, M. Radovic, and L. Riester, Comparison of Different Experimental Techniques for Determination of Elastic Properties of Solids, Pages 56-70. Copyright 2004, with permission from Elsevier. Materials Science and Engineering can be visited on line at <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09215093> |
| Q. Can measurements be taken at high temperature? |
| A. Yes. We can provide custom solutions or we can do the testing. Please visit our New Products page. Contact us for a quote. |
| H. D. Tietz, M. Dietz, L. Bühling, B. May, "Non-Destructive Testing of Green Ceramic Materials," NDT.net 3 [11] 1-7 (1998) | |
Updates are free and upgrades are offered at significant discounts to registered users. An update is classed as a maintenance release where minor bugs are fixed and minor changes to the interface are made. This is reflected in a change to the version number after the second decimal point (e.g. 5.0.1 to 5.0.2). An upgrade is classed as a major release in which significant changes to the interface are made and/or new features are added. This is reflected in a change to the version number before or after the first decimal point (e.g. 5.0.1 to 5.1 or 5.0 to 6.0).
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