Incident Wave Removal for Defect Enhancement in Acoustic Wavefield Imaging

The method of Acoustic Wavefield Imaging (AWI) offers many advantages over conventional ultrasonic techniques for nondestructive evaluation, and also provides a means of incorporating fixed ultrasonic sensors used for structural health monitoring into subsequent inspections. AWI utilizes these fixed sensors as wave sources and an externally scanned ultrasonic transducer (or laser interferometer) as a receiver to acquire complete waveform data over the surface. When displayed as time-dependent images, these signals show the propagation of acoustic waves through a structure and subsequent interactions of these waves with both defects and structural geometry. Defect areas appear as stationary scattering sources on these images, but such scattered wave energy is often obscured by the stronger incident acoustic wavefield. The objective of the work presented here is to develop multidimensional signal processing algorithms to enhance the appearance of structural defects on wavefield images via removal of the incident wave. Results are presented for analysis of images from aluminum plate and solid laminate composite specimens.