It meets some difficulties in the case of ultrasonic phased arrays testing for the nickel-based alloy welded joint, since the ultrasound will propagate with curvilinear paths in this kind anisotropic joint. Thus, it is hard to calculate the phased array time delays properly according to the traditional focusing approach, which is based on the assumption that the sound beam will propagate in straight lines. In order to focus the phased arrays beam in this kind anisotropic joint, we provide a modified focusing approach by combining the ray tracing method and the bisectional searching optimization. With the help of this focusing approach, the curved ray path connecting each element position in phased arrays to the expected focus point in weldments can be determined, so that it can be used to calculate the proper time delay and control the beam focusing in the anisotropic weldment. Furthermore, some experimental examinations are carried out to compare the focusing behaviors between the traditional and the modified focusing approach. It shows that the provided focusing approach is more accurate than the traditional method in the case of inspection on the nickel-based alloy weldments.
According to the principle of synchronous demodulation, the modulation informa- tion in the output signal of vibro-acoustic modulation test was investigated and the nonlinear interaction of sound and vibration with the crack interface in a metallic rod was analyzed. A swept signal excitation was used to obtain a proper high frequency parameter in the test of alu- minum rod samples with different sizes of cracks and the modulation information in the output signal was analyzed. It was found that the ultrasound wave in the structure can be separated into two parts. One is the wave which passes through the crack interface modulated by the low frequency vibration, and other wave has no any changes. The nonlinear modulation model was modified and a quantitative method for crack detection was proposed. It is demonstrated by comparing with the ultrasonic C-scanning that this method can be used to estimate the fatigue crack size in the metallic rod.
