• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.559-564
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• 2023

It is known that change in the bone strength of cortical bone constituting the outer shell of long bones such as the tibia or radius due to aging and osteoporosis is a risk factor for fracture. In this study, the group velocity of time-reversed Lamb waves generated in tibial cortical bone in vivo was measured using a time reversal method, and the correlations of the group velocity with the cortical bone thickness (cTh) and cortical bone mineral density (cBMD) closely related to the bone strength were investigated. It was found that the group velocity of time-reversed Lamb waves measured in the right tibia of 7 subjects showed a very high correlation, r = 0.90 (p < 0.0001), with the cTh and a relatively low correlation, r = 0.69 (p < 0.0001), with the cBMD. A limitation of this in vivo study is that the group velocity of time-reversed Lamb waves was measured for a normal group consisting of only 7 healthy adults. In the future, if the clinical usefulness of the time-reversed Lamb wave is demonstrated by follow-up studies on normal and osteoporotic groups consisting of a large number of healthy adults and osteoporotic patients, respectively, it is expected to improve the reliability of quantitative ultrasound technology for osteoporosis diagnosis. In addition, it is necessary to expand the skeletal site for measuring the group velocity of time-reversed Lamb waves not only to the tibia but also to the femur or radius.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.89-103
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• 2009

This study investigates the applicability of the time reversal concept in modem acoustics to the Lamb waves, which have been widely studied for defect detection in plate-like structures. According to conventional time reversal acoustics, an input signal can be reconstructed at an excitation point if an output signal recorded at another point is reversed in the time domain and emitted back to the original source point. However, the application of a time reversal process(TRP) to Lamb wave propagations is complicated due to velocity and amplitude dispersion characteristics of Lamb waves and reflections from the boundaries of a structure. In this study, theoretical investigations are presented to better understand the time reversibility of Lamb waves. In particular, the effects of within-mode dispersion, multimode dispersion, amplitude dispersion, and reflections from boundaries on the TRP are theoretically formulated. Simple numerical case studies are conducted to validate the theoretical findings of this study.