Inverse estimation of viscoelastic material properties for solids immersed in fluids using vibroacoustic techniques

This work presents an approach to inversely determine material properties for solids immersed in fluids through the use of steady-state dynamic response. The methodology uses measured acoustic pressure amplitudes in the fluid surrounding a structure being vibrated with a harmonic force to determine the parameters for elastic and viscoelastic material models. Steady-state dynamic finite element analysis is used to compute the frequency response function of homogeneous and heterogeneous solids. The frequency response is then used to inversely estimate material parameters. In order to solve the inverse problem, an optimization method is presented which combines the global search capabilities of the random search method with the reduced computational time of a surrogate model approach. Through numerical and laboratory experiments, this work shows that acoustic emissions hold sufficient information for quantifying both elastic and viscoelastic material behaviors. Furthermore, the examples show that the surrogate model accelerated random search algorithm is an efficient and accurate method for solving these types of inverse problems. This research has direct and important implications in nondestructive evaluation of material properties in general. However, the examples shown in this paper are based on applications related to noninvasive characterization of biological materials through methodologies currently applied to medical imaging.