In this contribution a simulation tool is developed to compute the energy skewing angles and energy coefficients
for the reflected and refracted plane waves in following general cases: (1) reflection and refraction
of plane elastic waves at an interface between isotropic and transversely isotropic solid, (2) reflection
and refraction of plane elastic waves at an interface between transversely isotropic and isotropic solid, (3)
reflection and refraction of plane elastic waves at an interface between two general transversely isotropic
solid and (4) reflection of plane elastic waves from a stress free boundary of a transversely isotropic solid.
Computational results for analytically evaluated acoustic wave energy skewing angles and energy reflection
and transmission coefficients in acoustically anisotropic materials such as austenitic steel materials
exhibiting columnar grain orientation are presented. The obtained results show that the acoustic energy
skewing angles and coefficients in austenitic steel materials strongly depend upon the columnar grain
orientation and are less influenced by the grain orientations which are parallel and perpendicular to the
interface.
This contribution describes a computationally efficient ray tracing algorithm for evaluating transducer generated ultrasonic wave fields in anisotropic materials such as austenitic cladded and austenitic weld components. According to this algorithm, ray paths are traced during its propagation through various layers of the material and at each Interface the problem of reflection and transmission is solved. The presented algorithm evaluates the transducer generated ultrasonic fields accurately by taking in to account the directivity, divergence, density of rays, phase relations as well as transmission coefficients. The ray tracing algorithm is able to calculate the ultrasonic wave fields generated by a point source as well as a finite dimension transducer. The simulation results are compared quantitatively with the results obtained from Elastodynamic Finite Integration Technique (EFIT) on several configurations generally occuring in the ultrasonic non destructive testing of anisotropic materials. The excellent agreement between both models confirms the validity of the presented ray tracing algorithm. Finally, the ray tracing model results are also validated by means of experiments.
This article describes a comprehensive quantitative analysis on effect of columnar grain orientation on ultrasonic plane wave energy reflection and transmission behaviour in acoustically anisotropic austenitic weld materials. The quantitative results are presented for following general interfaces (a) Isotropic-Anisotropic, (b) Anisotropic-Isotropic, (c) Fluid-Anisotropic, (d) Anisotropic-Fluid, (e) Anisotropic-Anisotropic, (f) Anisotropic-Free surface occur during the ultrasonic non destructive evaluation of austenitic weld materials. Explicit analytical expressions are presented for energy reflection and transmission coefficients at an interface between two arbitrarily oriented transversely isotropic materials. By applying explicit analytical expressions for energy reflection and transmission coefficients, numerical results are presented for several columnar grain orientations of the transverse isotropic austenitic weld material including both real and complex domain of the reflected and transmitted normal component of slowness vectors. Valid domains of incident wave vector angles, angular dependency of energy reflection and transmission coefficients and critical angles for reflected and transmitted waves are discussed. The existence of a reflected (or) transmitted second branch of quasi shear vertical waves and its consequence to the ultrasonic non destructive testing of austenitic weld materials are investigated. The presented comprehensive quantitative evaluation provides an overview on the effect of anisotropic properties on energy reflection and transmission coefficients in columnar grained austenitic weld materials.