Two-dimensional simulation of the single-sided air-coupled ultrasonic pitch-catch technique for non-destructive testing.

Non-contact air-coupled ultrasonic inspection of materials using single-sided access offers interesting possibilities for the development of in-line non-destructive testing (NDT) systems. This contribution reports observations and simulations obtained from a single-sided air-coupled pitch-catch configuration. The pitch-catch technique involves a set-up in which transmitter and receiver are located at the same side of the test object. Sound waves, reflected once or multiple times from the back-wall of the object or refracted by a discontinuity, are recorded and analyzed for visualization. The feasibility of the technique is demonstrated, experimentally, in the case of artificial defects in aluminium samples. Depending on the configuration one or more ultrasonic images of the defect can be observed, their number and relative position containing information about the location of the defect. The experiments are simulated using two distinctive methods. The first simulation is based on a ray tracing (shadow) approach, the second method uses a spectral solution implemented within COMSOL. Both simulation methods allow simple prediction of the response images in experimental conditions with supplementary levels of complexity, which will assist the development and optimization of online inspection techniques.