The acoustic signature for a surface-breaking crack produced by a point focus microscope

Abstract

The acoustic signature of a crack, breaking the surface of an otherwise homogeneous, isotropic elastic material, produced by a point focus scanning acoustic microscope is constructed theoretically. This work is patterned after a similar calculation carried out for the line focus microscope. The incident axisymmetric focused beam is constructed as a Fourier integral that produces a specified profile in the focal plane. The wavefields scattered from the specimen are also represented as Fourier integrals. Because the lens of the acoustic microscope is characterized by a large Fresnel number and an F number of order one, the Fourier integrals can be asymptotically approximated to obtain explicit expressions for the incident wavefield and for the wavefield scattered from a defect-free surface. The latter wavefield contains the leaky Rayleigh wave that is incident to the surface-breaking crack. The surface­-breaking crack is characterized by assigning it reflection and transmission coefficients. The wavefield scattered from the crack is estimated by tracing the leaky Rayleigh rays reflected and transmitted by the crack. The net wavefield scattered from the surface is then constructed by adding this crack scattered wavefield to that calculated for a defect-free surface. Lastly, the acoustic signature is calculated by using the appropriate incident and scattered wavefields in an electromechanical reciprocity identity that links the voltage measured at the microscope’s transducer to the scattered acoustic wavefields at the surface of the specimen. Expressions for acoustic signatures made using the line focus and point focus microscopes are compared. Moreover, from the expression for the acoustic signature, the Rayleigh wave reflection and transmission coefficients can be partly extracted.