•A laser-based nonlinear ultrasonic method is used to detect closed surface crack.•Nonlinear interaction is simulated by a numerical model and verified by experiment.•Remote and coupling-free measurement of closed surface crack. Nonlinear ultrasonic testing method is one of few techniques that are effective for evaluating early material degradation and micro-crack initiation by analysing the nonlinear effects of ultrasonic waves. This study presents a noncontact nonlinear ultrasonic testing method based on lasers for closed surface crack inspection. A pulsed laser grating source by grating mask is applied to generate narrowband surface acoustic wave of a chosen frequency. A nonlinear numerical simulation based on Finite Element Method (FEM) is developed to simulate the generation of higher harmonics by closed surface crack. The simulation results show that the acoustic nonlinearity parameter increases with the micro closed crack length, while decreases with the micro closed crack buried depth. Moreover, the detection capability of this method is verified by an experiment. The experimental results show that the proposed laser-based nonlinear ultrasonic testing method can provide a fully noncontact and coupling-free measurement method for closed surface crack inspection.