Angle Beam Nondestructive

Testing
Introduction

 Ultrasonic testing is useful for detecting the flaws in solid objects, mainly metals.
 The emitted ultrasonic signal frequency varies from 1 to 10 MHz.
 The operating principle of an angle beam transducer lies in the generation of a refracted wave
that propagates in the test sample at a certain angle, typically 45˚, 60˚, or 70˚.
 A flaw in the test sample results in a reflection of the wave that is detected by the transducer
(the same that emits the signal or a different one).
Theory

 The transducer sends an ultrasonic

Ultrasonic
longitudinal (pressure) wave of the speed transducer wedge
through the wedge, typically made of acrylic Incident
glass, at an angle . pressure
Test sample wave path
 The incident wave results in refracted
longitudinal and shear waves that propagate Refracted pressure
in the test sample with the speeds and , wave path
respectively.
 The angles of refraction are defined Refracted shear wave
path
according to Snell’s law as

 The angles that yield and are called the first Flaw
and the second critical angles, respectively.
Model Setup

 In this model, the transducer wedge is made

Ultrasonic
of acrylic plastic and the test sample of transducer wedge
aluminum. Incident
pressure
 The refracted shear wave propagates at the Test sample wave path

angle , which results in

. Refracted pressure
wave path
 The angle of incidence is greater than the
first critical angle for the given pair of
Refracted shear wave
materials, . path

 This means that the refracted longitudinal

wave skims along the test sample surface.
Flaw
Model Setup
Absorbing layer Absorbing layer
 The model uses the Elastic Waves, Time
Explicit physics interface that implements the
time-explicit discontinuous Galerkin finite
element method (dG-FEM).
 The source signal is given by a modulated
Gaussian pulse with a center frequency MHz.
 The Absorbing Layers together with the Low- Continuity pair
Reflecting Boundary condition imposed at the boundary condition

left and the right sides of the test sample

suppress spurious reflections from its ends.
 The use of a geometry assembly and the
Continuity pair boundary condition makes it
possible to have nonconforming meshes at
the transducer wedge/test sample interface.
Results

Velocity magnitude profiles at 3, 6, 9, and 12 µs: wave refraction and reflection from the flaw are clearly seen.
Results

Average pressure signal over the transducer surface: The reflection from the flaw is registered at µs.
Conclusions

 The Elastic Waves, Time Explicit interface shows high efficiency in the applications that
require modeling of transient wave propagation in linear elastic media
Solving for DOFs in this model only required GB of RAM.
Increasing the signal frequency twice results in DOFs and requires GB of RAM.
The use of the Solid Mechanics interface (that is based on a time-implicit second-order FEM method)
to solve the same problems results in poor scaling and higher consumption of RAM: GB and GB for
and , respectively.
 Taking advantage of the geometry assembly and the nonconforming mesh reduces the number
of DOFs and the computational time.
 The use of Absorbing Layers and Low-Reflecting Boundary conditions makes it possible to
model the wave propagation in an unbounded domain.