Numerical Investigation of Propagation of Ultrasonic Waves in the Waveguides with Mode Conversion

Abstract

Ultrasonic investigation techniques are widely used in materials characterisation and non-destructive testing applications. In special cases of applications, such as investigation of properties of melted polymers, metals and hot liquids, measurements must be performed in a wide temperature range. However conventional piezoelectric transducers cannot withstand higher temperatures than the Curie temperature. Therefore in order to protect conventional ultrasonic transducers from influence of a high temperature and to avoid depolarization, measurements must be performed using special waveguides with a low thermal conductivity between the object under investigation and the ultrasonic transducer. For measurements of the material properties, such as viscoelastic properties of materials, additional shear wave transducers must be used. In this work approach how to excite both, longitudinal and shear waves using special waveguides with mode conversion, using pair of conventional ultrasonic longitudinal wave transducers is presented. In this work numerical investigation of propagation of longitudinal and shear ultrasonic waves in the waveguides with mode conversion using finite element method and CIVA software was carried out. Modelling of propagation of simultaneously generated longitudinal and shear waves using pair of longitudinal ultrasonic transducers was performed. Influence of temperature gradient to the required incidence angle of the longitudinal wave was evaluated.