Review of Second Harmonic Generation Measurement Techniques for Material State Determination in Metals

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the current state of knowledge of second harmonic generation (SHG) measurements, a subset of nonlinear ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation techniques. These SHG techniques exploit the material nonlinearity of metals in order to measure the acoustic nonlinearity parameter, $$\beta $$β. In these measurements, a second harmonic wave is generated from a propagating monochromatic elastic wave, due to the anharmonicity of the crystal lattice, as well as the presence of microstructural features such as dislocations and precipitates. This article provides a summary of models that relate the different microstructural contributions to $$\beta $$β, and provides details of the different SHG measurement and analysis techniques available, focusing on longitudinal and Rayleigh wave methods. The main focus of this paper is a critical review of the literature that utilizes these SHG methods for the nondestructive evaluation of plasticity, fatigue, thermal aging, creep, and radiation damage in metals.