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Air-coupled ultrasound (ACU) is used in through transmission to detect delamination, rot, and cracks in wood without altering the structure permanently. Novel ferroelectret transducers with a high signal-to-noise ratio enable high-precision structure recognition. Transducers made of cellular polypropylene are quite suitable for ACU testing due to their extremely low Young’s modulus and low density resulting in a favorable acoustic impedance for the transmission of ultrasonic waves between the transducer and air. Thus, structures with great dimensions, with a thickness of up to 300 mm and material densities below 500 kg/m3, can be inspected. Promising results were obtained under laboratory conditions with frequencies ranging from 90 to 200 kHz. The advantage of ACU transducers is that they do not require contact to the sample; they are accurate and cost-effective. Ultrasonic quality assurance for wood is an important avenue to increase the acceptance of wooden structures and toward sustainability in civil engineering in general.

High sensitivity is an important requirement for air-coupled ultrasonic sensors applied to materials testing. With a lower acoustic impedance than any piezoelectric material, charged cellular polypropylene (PP) offers better matching to air with a similar piezoelectric coefficient. The piezoelectric properties of charged cellular PP originate from their polarization, creating permanent internal voltage. The sensitivity of the sensor can be increased by applying additional dc bias voltage, as it has been done already for transmitters. This work presents the first ultrasonic sensor based on charged cellular PP including a high-voltage module providing dc bias voltage up to 2 kV. This bias voltage led to an increase in the signal-to-noise ratio of up to 15 ± 1 dB. The measurement of the received signal depending on the applied bias voltage is proposed as a new method of determining the internal voltage of ferroelectrets. The sensor combined with a cellular PP transmitter was applied to nondestructive testing of a rotor blade segment and glued-laminated timber, enabling imaging of the internal structure of these specimens with a thickness around 4 cm.