Experimental investigation of bounded beam reflection from plane interfaces in the vicinity of leaky waves angles

The aim of this work is an experimental validation of the reflected and tra nsmitted fields through a viscoelastic material when a bounded ultrasonic b eam is incident at different angles. Special measurements are carried out w hen incidence is performed at some critical angles of the material used. So the propagation of leaky waves along the solid layer is investigated. The inverse procedure for optimizing model parameters from the noisy input-outp ut data is performed using the maximum likelihood estimator. (C) 2000 Elsev ier Science B.V. All rights reserved.