Main Features of a Complete Ultrasonic Measurement Model: Formal Aspects of Modeling of Both Transducers Radiation and Ultrasonic Flaws Responses

This paper aims at describing the theoretical fundamentals of a reciprocity-based ultrasonic measurement model. This complete inspection simulation can be decomposed in two modeling steps, one dedicated to transducer radiation and one to flaw scattering and echo synthesis. The physical meaning of the input/output signals used in these two modeling tools is defined and the theoretical principles of both field calculation and echo computation models are then detailed. The influence on the modeling results of some changes in the simulated configuration (as the incident angle) or some input signal parameters (like the frequency) are studied: it is thus theoretically established that the simulated results can be compared between each other in terms of amplitude for numerous applications when changing some inspection parameters in the simulation but that a calibration for echo calculation is generally required.