Computationally Efficient Ray Tracing Algorithm for Simulation of Transducer Fields in Anisotropic Materials

This contribution describes a computationally efficient ray tracing algorithm for evaluating transducer generated ultrasonic wave fields in anisotropic materials such as austenitic cladded and austenitic weld components. According to this algorithm, ray paths are traced during its propagation through various layers of the material and at each interface the problem of reflection and transmission is solved. The presented algorithm evaluates the transducer generated ultrasonic fields accurately by taking in to account the directivity, divergence, density of rays, phase relations as well as transmission coefficients. The ray tracing algorithm is able to calculate the ultrasonic wave fields generated by a point source as well as a finite dimension transducer. The simulation results are compared quantitatively with the results obtained from Elastodynamic Finite Integration Technique (EFIT) on several configurations generally occuring in the ultrasonic non destructive testing of anisotropic materials. The excellent agreement between both models confirms the validity of the presented ray tracing algorithm. Finally, the ray tracing model results are also validated by means of experiments.