Ultrasonic transducer modeling in homogeneous and nonhomogeneous media

Abstract

Ultrasonic transducer modeling is important and fundamental research for nondestructive testing of materials. Traditionally, in most nondestructive evaluation applications, the ultrasonic transducers are modeled as point sources generating spherical wave fronts, line sources generating cylindrical wave fronts, or planar surfaces generating plane wave fronts. In reality, the transducer front face has finite dimensions; it is neither point source nor planar source. This study shows how the ultrasonic field in the neighborhood of a transducer with finite dimension varies in homogeneous and nonhomogeneous media. In this thesis, the pressure variation in front of a transducer face is computed for the following three situations: (1) the transducer is immersed in a homogeneous fluid; (2) the transducer is near a fluid-fluid interface; and (3) the transducer is near a fluid-solid interface using Distributed Point Source Method For the nonhomogeneous fluid medium, both normal incidence and oblique incidence cases have been studied.