Patent ID: 8600702

Claim:
A system for measuring thickness of an object having an outer surface comprising: a vibration application mechanism configured to apply a vibration to the object wherein the vibration comprises white noise having a predetermined frequency range that is less than the entire white noise spectrum; a vibration monitoring device configured to gather displacement data for a discrete location on the outer surface of the object; and a data processing system configured to determine a resonant frequency of the object based at least in part on the displacement data gathered by the vibration monitoring device and to calculate the thickness of the object at the discrete location based at least in part on the resonant frequency; wherein the data processing system is further configured to calculate the wave number (“n”) by solving the equation: n = 2 ⁢ ( d ref * f ref V ref + 1 4 ) where d ref is a known thickness of a reference object, f ref is a resonant frequency of the reference object, and V ref is a velocity of a wave through the reference object, wherein the object and the reference object comprise the same material; and calculate the thickness of the object by solving the equation: d = ( 2 ⁢ n - 1 ) ⁢ V 4 ⁢ ⁢ f where V is equal to V ref and f is equal to f ref .