Evaluation of ray-based methods for the simulation of UT welds inspection

The reliability of ray-based approaches for the simulation of inspection of austenitic or bimetallic welds is assessed. A first modeling approach consists in describing the weld as a set of several anisotropic homogeneous domains with a given grain orientation. In this case, the rays travel in straight lines inside each domain. A second modeling approach uses dynamic ray tracing, considering a smooth description of the crystallographic orientation. Simulation results using both approaches are presented, discussed and compared to finite elements results. (authors)