Time of flight diffraction imaging for double-probe technique

Due to rapid progress in microelectronics and computer technologies, the system evolving from analog to digital, and a programmable and flexible synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) for the single-probe pulse-echo imaging technique of ultrasonic nondestructive testing (NDT) becomes feasible. The double-probe reflection technique usually is used to detect the nonhorizontal flaws in the ultrasonic NDT. Because there is an offset between the transmitter and receiver, the position and size of the flaw cannot be directly read from the image. Therefore, a digital signal processing (DSP) imaging method is proposed to process the ultrasonic image obtained by double-probe reflection technique. In the imaging, the signal is redistributed on an ellipsoid with the transmitter and receiver positions as focuses, and the traveltime sum for the echo from the ellipsoid to the focuses as the traveltime of signal. After redistributing all the signals, the useful signals can be constructively added in some point in which the reflected point is; otherwise, the signals will be destructively added. Therefore, the image resolution of the flaw can be improved and the position and size of the flaw can be estimated directly from the processed image. Based on the experimental results, the steep flaw (450) cannot be detected by the pulse echo technique but can be detected by the double-probe method, and the double-probe B-scan image of 300 tilted crack is clearer than the pulse echo B-scan image. However, the flaw image departs from its true position greatly. After processing, the steep flaw image can be moved to its true position. When the flaws are not greater than the probe largely, the sizes of the flaws are difficult to be discriminated in both pulse echo and double-probe B-scan images. In the processed double-probe B-scan image, the size of the flaws can be estimated successfully, and the images of the flaws are close to their true shape.