Effects of Material Anisotropy on Ultrasonic Beam Propagation: Diffraction and Beam Skew

The necessity of nondestructively inspecting austenitic steels, fiber-reinforced composites, and other inherently anisotropic materials has stimulated considerable interest in developing beam models for anisotropic media. The properties of slowness surface playa key role in the beam models based on the paraxial approximation. In this paper, we apply a modular multi-Gaussian beam (MMGB) model to study the effects of material anisotropy on ultrasonic beam profile. It is shown that the anisotropic effects of beam skew and excess beam divergence enter into the MMGB model through parameters defining the slope and curvature of the slowness surface. The overall beam profile is found when the quasilongitudinal(qL) beam propagates in the symmetry plane of transversely isotropic austenitic steels. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effects of these parameters on ultrasonic beam diffraction and beam skew. The MMGB calculations are also checked by comparing the anisotropy factor and beam skew angle with other analytical solutions