ULTRASONIC TESTING

CHAPTER 3
BEHAVIOUR OF ULTRASONICS

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 OUTLINE
Behaviour of ultrasonic waves
Reflection of Sound Waves
Refraction of Sound Waves
Mode conversion
Snell's Law
First and second critical angles
Second critical angles
Acoustic Impedance
Acoustic Pressure and Intensity

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 REFLECTION OF SOUND WAVES
When ultrasonic waves are
incidence at an angle to the
boundary of two media of different
acoustic impedances, then some of
the waves are reflected and some
are transmitted across the
boundary.
The amount of ultrasonic energy
that is reflected or transmitted
depends on the difference between
the acoustic impedances of the two
media.

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 Reflection of Sound Waves Contd.
If this difference is large then most of the energy is reflected and only
a small portion is transmitted across the boundary.
For a small difference in the acoustic impedances most of the
ultrasonic energy is transmitted and only a small portion is reflected
back.
Reflection Factor - the fraction of the incident wave intensity that is
reflected (the reflection coefficient) can be calculated as:

Where Z1, Z2 are the acoustic impedances.

This difference in Z is commonly referred to as the impedance
mismatch.

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 Reflection of Sound Waves Contd.
The greater the impedance mismatch, the greater the percentage of energy
that will be reflected at the interface or boundary.
Transmission Factor
The amount of reflected energy plus the transmitted energy must be equal
the total amount of incident energy, the transmission coefficient is
calculated by simply subtracting the reflection coefficient from one
T =(1-R)
If acoustic pressure is considered then

Reflection Coefficient R

Transmission Coefficient T

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 Reflection of Sound Waves Contd.
Taking for example, a water steel interface and calculating the reflection and
transmission coefficients, we get R= 0.88 and T= 0.12. This means that the
amount of energy transmitted into the second material is only 12% while 88%
is reflected back at the interface.

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 What portion of the signal will be reflected at an Air-Steel interface?
( Z air = 0.0004X106 Kg/m2 s , Z steel = 46.5X106 Kg/m2 s)

Class room workout

Answer : 99.96%

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 REFRACTION OF SOUND WAVES
Refraction is a change in the direction of waves as it passes from one
medium to another. Refraction, or bending of the path of the waves,
is accompanied by a change in speed and wavelength of the waves.
Refraction takes place at an interface due to the different velocities of
the acoustic waves within the two materials.
If the media (or its properties) are changed, the speed of the wave is
changed.

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 SNELLs LAW
When an ultrasonic wave passes through
an interface between two materials at an
oblique angle, and the materials have
different indices of refraction, both
reflected and refracted waves are
produced.
At oblique incidence the phenomena of
mode conversion (i.e a change in the
nature of the wave motion) and
refraction ( a change in the direction of
wave propagation) occur.
Snell's Law describes the relationship
between the angles and the velocities of
the waves.

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 Snells Law Contd.
Snell's law equates the ratio of material velocities to the ratio of the
sine's of incident and refracted angles, as shown in the following
equation:

Where ;

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 MODE CONVERSION
In a solid material, one form of wave energy is transformed into another
form.
Mode conversion occurs when a wave
encounters an interface between
materials of different acoustic impedances
and the incident angle is not normal to the Reflected
Shear wave
interface.
Converted
It should be noted that mode conversion Longitudinal wave
occurs every time a wave encounters an
interface at an angle.
This mode conversion occurs for both the
portion of the wave that passes through
the interface and the portion that reflects off the interface.
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 Mode Conversion Contd.
When a longitudinal wave is reflected inside the material, the reflected
shear wave is reflected at a smaller angle than the reflected longitudinal
wave.
Snell's Law holds true for shear waves as well as longitudinal waves and
can be written as follows:

Where;
VL1 & VL2 : the longitudinal wave velocities in the
first and second materials respectively
VS1VS2 : the shear wave velocities in the first and
second materials respectively
1 & 2 : the angles of incident and refracted
longitudinal waves respectively
3 & 4 : the angles of the converted reflected and
refracted shear waves respectively
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 CRITICAL ANGLES
First Critical Angle
When a longitudinal wave is incident
on a solid material, there is an incident
angle that makes the angle of refraction
for the longitudinal wave to become 90.
This is angle is as the first critical angle.
Second Critical Angle
When the incident angle is further
increased, the angle that makes the
angle of refraction for the shear wave to become 90 is known as the
second critical angle.
Slightly beyond the second critical angle, surface (Rayleigh) waves will be
generated.

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 Critical Angles Contd.
At First critical angle of incidence the
compression wave, which travels
along the interface decays
exponentially with depth from the
interface. This wave is sometimes
referred to as a "creep wave".
At second critical angle, all of the
wave energy is reflected or refracted
into the surface following shear wave
or shear creep wave.
Because that the creep waves decay
rapidly, they are not used as
extensively as Rayleigh surface waves
in NDT.

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 Calculate the First and Second critical angles for Steel?

Class room workout

Answer :
First Critical Angle : 27.6

Second Critical Angle : 57.1

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 Calculate the incident angle of the ultrasonic wave in perspex when the
using 45 angle probe in steel (compression wave velocity of Perspex is
2730 m/sec, shear wave of steel is 3250 m/sec, longitudinal wave
velocity of steel is 5920 m/sec) :

Class room workout

Answer : 36.5

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 ACCOUSTIC IMPEDANCE
The acoustic impedance of a material is the opposition to
displacement of its particles by sound.
The acoustic impedance (Z) of a material is defined as the product of
its density () and acoustic velocity (V).
Z = V
Used to determine the acoustic transmission and reflection at the
boundary of two materials having different acoustic impedances.
The effectiveness of transmitting vibration is frequency dependent i.e,
every object has a resonant frequency, and that frequency is
determined by an object's acoustic impedance.
The impedance ratio is the impedance of the second medium divided
by the impedance of the first medium.

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 ACOUSTIC PRESSURE AND INTENSITY
Sound pressure or acoustic pressure is the local pressure deviation from
the ambient atmospheric pressure caused by a sound wave.
Sound pressure or sound level can be quantified by logarithmic measure
of the effective sound pressure of a sound relative to a reference value.
The intensity of sound waves is proportional to the square of the pressure
amplitude, the ratio of sound intensity in decibels can be expressed as:

where;
: the change in sound intensity between two measurements
V1 & V2 : are the two different transducer output voltages

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 UNIT OF SOUND
The Decibel (dB) is a logarithmic unit that describes a ratio of two
measurements. The difference between two measurements X1 and X2 is
described in decibels as:

Use of dB units allows ratios of various sizes to be described using easy to

work with numbers.

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 DISCUSSION

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