Modeling of ultrasonic fields radiated by contact transducer in a component of irregular surface

The wedge of a contact transducer is imperfectly coupled to a component of irregular surface. A volume between the wedge and the component (filled by water or oil used as a coupling) is created that fundamentally modifies transducer radiation behavior. As a result, phenomena like beam spreading, skewing and splitting, generation of unwanted contributions that possibly lead to false alarms may occur. At first, the paper describes a model to account for the main effects observable in such a situation. The model is based on a matrix method which describes the behavior of transient elementary contributions as the variation of a pencil propagating into homogeneous regions (namely, the wedge, the coupling and the component) and through interfaces between them (refraction and reflection). The elementary contributions accounting for the finite size of the transducer are summed to predict transducer diffraction effects. In a second part, predicted fields are compared to measured results. The comparison concerns particle velocity fields measurements at the surface opposite to that (irregular) on which the transducer acts. The very good agreement obtained proves the validity of our approach.