Ultrasonic Technology in the 21st Century

About Us

SoniSys, Inc. was founded by Dr. Pierre Brodeur in 2000 as a research and development company specializing in the field of dry contact ultrasonic technology for the testing of flexible materials.  His specialized knowledge of laboratory ultrasonic measurement applications for pulp and paper testing led to a NSF-SBIR Phase I and Phase II grant. 

The goal of this project was to advance a non-destructive analytical instrument and method for measuring the strength and stiffness properties in a direction normal to the principal plane of thin fibrous materials such as paper and paperboard. This technology, based on ultrasonic transmission, addresses a deficiency in existing mechanical fracture methods that suffer poor reproducibility and are tedious to perform. Phase I of this project focused on developing the signal conditioning and analysis of the detected ultrasonic pulse in order to improve the resolution of traveling time of the longitudinal sound wave through the structure. Traveling time and thickness, measured using soft platens, are used to calculate the sound velocity, which is directly proportional to the Longitudinal Specific Stiffness, C33/rho, of the material. Phase I demonstrated a possible relationship between the Young’s modulus, C33, in the out-of-plane direction, to the internal bond strength as measured using Z-directional tensile strength (ZDT) and Scott bond strength standard methods.

Phase II of this project focused on refining the ultrasonic procedure to eliminate limitations identified in Phase I. This culminated in the development of a prototype commercial instrument designed specifically for out-of-plane measurements, called OPUS (acronym for Out of Plane Ultrasonic System). The technology was validated with a specific focus on higher weight (grammage) boards where out-of-plane strength, or ply strength, is critical for end use performance. It was found that the ultrasonic Specific Stiffness,C₃₃/rho, relates closely to ZDT strength.  A draft standard TAPPI test method for this analytical approach will be proposed based on this relationship. 

In addition to liner boards, other paper products have been tested with great success.  Impregnated papers, for instance, can be tracked throughout their multi-stage process because the samples are never destroyed by ultrasonic testing.   Tissue softness testing has produced very promising results and we are currently using OPUS to test the change in strength when the same tissue samples are wet and dry.

SoniSys is committed to helping your company use ultrasonic testing to develop meaningful quality and process control methods to reduce your company’s cost and maintain your desired product quality.