Time Reversal Focusing and Imaging of Point-Like Defects in Specimens with Nonplanar Surface Geometry

Nonplanar surface geometries of components are frequently encountered in real ultrasonic inspection situations. Use of rigid array transducers can lead to beam defocusing and reduction of defect image quality due to the mismatch between the planar array and the changing surface. When a flexible array is used to fit the complex surface profile, the locations of array elements should be known to compute the delay time necessary for adaptive heam focusing. An alternative method is to employ the time reversal focusing technique that does not require a prior knowledge about the properties and structures of the specimen and the transducer. In this paper, a time reversal method is applied to simulate beam focusing of flexible arrays and imaging of point-like defects contained in specimens with nonplanar surface geometry. Quantitative comparisons are made for the performance of a number of array techniques in terms of the ability to focus and image three point-like reflectors positioned at regular intervals. The sinusoidal profile array studied here exhibits almost the same image quality as the flat, reference case.