In this contribution a 3D ray tracing model for ultrasonic
field evaluation in inhomogeneous anisotropic materials
such as austenitic welds is presented. The inhomogenity of
austenitic weld material is represented as several
homogeneous layers. The general problem of energy
reflection and transmission at the boundaries of the layers
are solved resulting 3D amplitude and energy reflection and
transmission coefficients. The directivity factor for the ray in
general arbitrary oriented austenitic weld material (including
lay back orientation) is determined based on Lambs
reciprocity theorem. The transducer excited ultrasonic fields
are accurately evaluated by employing ray directivity factor,
transmission coefficients, divergence of the ray bundle and
density of rays. Finally, the comparison between theoretical
and experimental results will be described.
Ultrasonic investigation of inhomogeneous anisotropic materials such as austenitic welds is complicated because its columnar grain structure leads to curved energy paths, beam splitting and asymmetrical beam profiles. A ray tracing model has potential advantage in analyzing the ultrasonic sound field propagation and there with optimizing the inspection parameters. In this contribution we present a 2D ray tracing model to predict energy ray paths, ray amplitudes and travel times for the three wave modes quasi longitudinal, quasi shear vertical, and shear horizontal waves in austenitic weld materials. Inhomogenity in the austenitic weld material is represented by discretizing the inhomogeneous region into several homogeneous layers. At each interface between the layers the reflection and transmission problem is computed and yields energy direction, amplitude and energy coefficients. The ray amplitudes are computed accurately by taking into account directivity, divergence and density of rays, phase relations as well as transmission coefficients. Ultrasonic sound fields obtained from the ray tracing model are compared quantitatively with the 2D Elastodynamic Finite Integration Technique (EFIT). The excellent agreement between both models confirms the validity of the presented ray tracing results. Experiments are conducted on austenitic weld samples with longitudinal beam transducer as transmitting probe and amplitudes at the rear surface are scanned by means of electrodynamical probes. Finally, the ray tracing model results are also validated through the experiments.
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.