Simulation of ultrasonic and EMAT arrays using FEM and FDTD

Yuedong Xie; Wuliang Yin; Zenghua Liu; Anthony Peyton

doi:10.1016/j.ultras.2015.10.020

Simulation of ultrasonic and EMAT arrays using FEM and FDTD

Ultrasonics. 2016 Mar:66:154-165. doi: 10.1016/j.ultras.2015.10.020. Epub 2015 Nov 10.

Authors

Yuedong Xie¹, Wuliang Yin², Zenghua Liu³, Anthony Peyton⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom. Electronic address: yuedong.xie@manchester.ac.uk.
² School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom. Electronic address: wuliang.yin@manchester.ac.uk.
³ College of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Electronics Technology, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China. Electronic address: liuzenghua@bjut.edu.cn.
⁴ School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom. Electronic address: a.peyton@manchester.ac.uk.

PMID: 26596420
DOI: 10.1016/j.ultras.2015.10.020

Abstract

This paper presents a method which combines electromagnetic simulation and ultrasonic simulation to build EMAT array models. For a specific sensor configuration, Lorentz forces are calculated using the finite element method (FEM), which then can feed through to ultrasonic simulations. The propagation of ultrasound waves is numerically simulated using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to describe their propagation within homogenous medium and their scattering phenomenon by cracks. Radiation pattern obtained with Hilbert transform on time domain waveforms is proposed to characterise the sensor in terms of its beam directivity and field distribution along the steering angle.

Keywords: Electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT); Finite difference time domain (FDTD); Finite element method (FEM); Phased array; Ultrasonic Testing (UT).