Hybrid Seminumerical Simulation Scheme to Predict Transducer Outputs of Acoustic Microscopes

We present a seminumerical simulation method called SIRFEM, which enables the efficient prediction of high-frequency transducer outputs. In particular, this is important for acoustic microscopy where the specimen under investigation is immersed in a coupling fluid. Conventional finite-element (FE) simulations for such applications would consume too much computational power due to the required spatial and temporal discretization, especially for the coupling fluid between ultrasonic transducer and specimen. However, FE simulations are in most cases essential to consider the mode conversion at and inside the solid specimen as well as the wave propagation in its interior. SIRFEM reduces the computational effort of pure FE simulations by treating only the solid specimen and a small part of the fluid layer with FE. The propagation in the coupling fluid from transducer to specimen and back is processed by the so-called spatial impulse response (SIR). Through this hybrid approach, the number of elements as well as the number of time steps for the FE simulation can be reduced significantly, as it is presented for an axis-symmetric setup. Three B-mode images of a plane 2-D setup-computed at a transducer center frequency of 20 MHz-show that SIRFEM is, furthermore, able to predict reflections at inner structures as well as multiple reflections between those structures and the specimen's surface. For the purpose of a pure 2-D setup, the SIR of a curved-line transducer is derived and compared to the response function of a cylindrically focused aperture of negligible extend in the third spatial dimension.