Ultrasound Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) Imaging with Transducer Arrays and Adaptive Processing 英文参考文献.docVIP

Sensors 2012, 12, 42-54; doi:10.3390/s120100042 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 /journal/sensors Article Ultrasound Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) Imaging with Transducer Arrays and Adaptive Processing Minghui Li * and Gordon Hayward Centre for Ultrasonic Engineering, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Strathclyde, 204 George Street, Glasgow G1 1XW, UK; E-Mail: g.hayward@eee.strath.ac.uk * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: minghui.li@; Tel.: +44-141-548-2463. Received: 23 November 2011; in revised form: 19 December 2011 / Accepted: 21 December 2011 / Published: 22 December 2011 Abstract: This paper addresses the challenging problem of ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation (NDE) imaging with adaptive transducer arrays. In NDE applications, most materials like concrete, stainless steel and carbon-reinforced composites used extensively in industries and civil engineering exhibit heterogeneous internal structure. When inspected using ultrasound, the signals from defects are significantly corrupted by the echoes form randomly distributed scatterers, even defects that are much larger than these random reflectors are difficult to detect with the conventional delay-and-sum operation. We propose to apply adaptive beamforming to the received data samples to reduce the interference and clutter noise. Beamforming is to manipulate the array beam pattern by appropriately weighting the per-element delayed data samples prior to summing them. The adaptive weights are computed from the statistical analysis of the data samples. This delay-weight-and-sum process can be explained as applying a lateral spatial filter to the signals across the probe aperture. Simulations show that the clutter noise is reduced by more than 30 dB and the lateral resolution is enhanced simultaneously when adaptive beamforming is applie