Assessment of Scattered Damage in Structural Materials

Abstract

Methods for assessing scattered damage to materials are considered. Ultrasonic methods based on recording backscattered ultrasonic signals are among the most practically feasible methods for assessing scattered damage to materials at the mesolevel (the size of the probing wavelength). We describe methods for determining scattered damage in the volume of a material based on scanning the object surface with a normal double-crystal piezoelectric transducer, recording and statistically processing the backscattered signal in the form of an A-scan, constructing the spatial distribution of backscattering cross section in the form of a B-scan or tomographic image, and assessing damage in the material volume based on the relative change in the backscattering cross section or the “disorder” of its spatial image.