ULTRASONIC TOMOGRAPHY METHOD Russian patent published in 2024 - IPC G01N29/06 

FIELD: physics.

SUBSTANCE: invention relates to the field of ultrasonic non-destructive testing and can be used in the ultrasonic inspection of an article with a curved outer surface and one-sided access, for example, journals of crankshafts of internal combustion engines, pipelines or pipelines with conical surface. Method of ultrasonic tomography consists in the fact that a flexible antenna array is used to inspect an object with a curvilinear outer surface, which is placed in an immersion bath. Flexible antenna array is tightly placed on the surface of the controlled object, and three receiving acoustic sensors are placed above it, wherein all acoustic sensors are located at the vertices of an arbitrary triangle on a plate attached to a bracket at the edge of the immersion bath, so that they are immersed in the immersion liquid, and the flexible antenna array is completely located in their acoustic field. Ultrasonic signals are emitted independently by each element of the array, these signals are received by each element of the flexible antenna array, digitized and stored in the memory of realizations. Ultrasonic signals emitted in the opposite direction by each element of the flexible antenna array are received by three receiving ultrasonic sensors. Propagation time of ultrasonic signals from each element of the flexible antenna array to each of the three ultrasonic sensors is used to determine the distance from each element of the flexible antenna array to each of the three ultrasonic sensors. Coordinates of elements of the flexible antenna array are calculated and the obtained values are used to reconstruct the tomogram by digital focusing. Total signal is detected, the maximum value is stored in the image memory and encoded in grayscale or colour for display on the display screen.

EFFECT: determining spatial coordinates of each element of the flexible antenna array and, based on this, performing the tomogram reconstruction by the full focusing method.

1 cl, 3 dwg