An experimental investigation of the method for liquid level detection using the amplitude of pseudo-Rayleigh waves at the fluid-solid interface

Based on the fact that the attenuation of pseudo-Rayleigh waves at the fluid-solid interface is related to the fluid properties, this paper proposes an acoustic method for liquid level detection using the amplitude of pseudo-Rayleigh waves. We firstly introduce the theoretical basis of this method and review the critical conclusions of the numerical study in our previous paper. Then, an experimental measurement is performed to investigate the correlations between the liquid level and the amplitude/frequency-shift of the impulsive pseudo-Rayleigh waves which propagate along the surface of an aluminum cylinder and are excited and recorded by two shear wave transducers with fixed distance. The experimental result shows that, when the distance between source and receiver is constant, the amplitude of the pseudo-Rayleigh wave declines exponentially with the liquid level increases; its central frequency becomes lower linearly at the same time. Therefore, the feasibility and effectiveness of this method are validated.