Benefits of Software Beamforming for Ultrasonic Inspections

Nondestructive testing (NDT) is used in more and more industries and inspection techniques must constantly adapt to complex materials (coarse grained materials, composites, etc.), defects (corrosion, fatigue crack, HTHA, etc.) or new inspection standards. Ultrasonic imaging methods have long been limited by low data throughput and a small number of transducers, but this is no longer the case with nowadays electronic devices and computers which enable large amounts of raw data to be acquired and processed in real time. The Delay-and-Sum (DAS) algorithm, which has been used almost automatically in many applications over the past few years, is now outperformed by advanced processing methods. In this context, this article presents few real-time advanced reconstruction techniques that enhance the quality of ultrasonic images on typical industrial applications. The first example concerns coherence beamformers such as Phase Coherence Imaging (PCI) which exploit the phase information of the signals. This type of method proves to be highly effective in detecting diffraction echoes from crack-like defects or in improving contrast and resolution of images from corroded samples inspections. The second example uses cross-correlation techniques that have been known for years to improve detection in various fields. Correlating the data with the transmitted signal reduces electronic noise and improves signal-to-noise ratio. This application also benefits from recent progress of ultrasonic devices that are able to modulate complex excitation signals in emission. This type of method is very promising for the inspection of attenuative materials and coarse-grained steels. © 2023 The Authors.