Modeling ultrasonic wave fields scattered by flaws using a quasi-Monte Carlo method: Theoretical method and experimental verification

Abstract

The modeling and visualization of wave fields scattered by flaws can be helpful in terms of guiding the testing and evaluation of flaws using an ultrasonic nondestructive method. In this work, the ultrasonic scattering of wave fields from flaws with different shapes is modeled using a quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) method and measured through experiments for verification. The incident wave fields generated by a transducer can be modeled using the Rayleigh integral expression and calculated using the QMC method. When the size of the flaw is much larger than the wavelength, the incident wave over the lit portion of flaw can be treated as the source for the scattering of wave fields, and these wave fields can also be modeled using the proposed QMC method. In this paper, water is treated as the material and an embedded solid component is considered as the flaw. Numerical examples and results are presented for flaws with different shapes and sizes, and the properties of these scattering wave fields are analyzed and discussed. Experiments are performed to measure the scattering wave fields using a needle transducer, and it is shown that the results agree with the simulations, thus verifying the proposed modeling method. The work presented here can assist in understanding the wave-flaw interaction and can help in optimizing ultrasonic nondestructive testing.

Keywords: Flaw scattering; Wave field modeling method; quasi-Monte Carlo method.