Research Articles

Journal article

Huthwaite P, 2016,

Improving accuracy through density correction in guided wave tomography

, Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol: 472, Pages: 1-25, ISSN: 1364-5021

The accurate quantification of wall loss caused by corrosion is critical to the reliable life estimation of pipes and pressure vessels. Traditional thickness gauging by scanning a probe is slow and requires access to all points on the surface; this is impractical in many cases as corrosion often occurs where access is restricted, such as beneath supports where water collects. Guided wave tomography presents a solution to this; by transmitting guided waves through the region of interest and exploiting their dispersive nature, it is possible to build up a map of thickness. While the best results have been seen when using the fundamental modes A0 and S0 at low frequency, the complex scattering of the waves causes errors within the reconstruction. It is demonstrated that these lead to an underestimate in wall loss for A0 but an overestimate for S0. Further analysis showed that this error was related to density variation, which was proportional to thickness. It was demonstrated how this could be corrected for in the reconstructions, in many cases resulting in the near-elimination of the error across a range of defects, and greatly improving the accuracy of life estimates from guided wave tomography.

Journal article

Leinov E, Lowe MJS, Cawley P, 2016,

Ultrasonic isolation of buried pipes

, Journal of Sound and Vibration, Vol: 363, Pages: 225-239, ISSN: 0022-460X

Long-range guided wave testing (GWT) is used routinely for the monitoring and detection of corrosion defects in above ground pipelines. The GWT test range in buried, coated pipelines is greatly reduced compared to above ground configurations due to energy leakage into the embedding soil. In this paper, the effect of pipe coatings on the guided wave attenuation is investigated with the aim of increasing test ranges for buried pipelines. The attenuation of the T(0,1) and L(0,2) guided wave modes is measured using a full-scale experimental apparatus in a fusion-bonded epoxy (FBE)-coated 8 in. pipe, buried in loose and compacted sand. Tests are performed over a frequency range typically used in GWT of 10–35 kHz and compared with model predictions. It is shown that the application of a low impedance coating between the FBE layer and the sand effectively decouples the influence of the sand on the ultrasound leakage from the buried pipe. Ultrasonic isolation of a buried pipe is demonstrated by coating the pipe with a Polyethylene (PE)-foam layer that has a smaller impedance than both the pipe and sand, and has the ability to withstand the overburden load from the sand. The measured attenuation in the buried PE-foam-FBE-coated pipe is found to be substantially reduced, in the range of 0.3–1.2 dB m⁻¹ for loose and compacted sand conditions, compared to measured attenuation of 1.7–4.7 dB m⁻¹ in the buried FBE-coated pipe without the PE-foam. The acoustic properties of the PE-foam are measured independently using ultrasonic interferometry and incorporated into model predictions of guided wave propagation in buried coated pipe. Good agreement is found between the experimental measurements and model predictions. The attenuation exhibits periodic peaks in the frequency domain corresponding to the through-thickness resonance frequencies of the coating layer. The large reduction in guided wave attenuation for PE-coated pipes would lead to greatly increas

Journal article

Hernando Quintanilla F, Lowe MJS, Craster RV, 2015,

Full 3D dispersion curve solutions for guided waves in generally anisotropic media

, Journal of Sound and Vibration, Vol: 363, Pages: 545-559, ISSN: 1095-8568

Dispersion curves of guided waves provide valuable information about the physical and elastic properties of waves propagating within a given waveguide structure. Algorithms to accurately compute these curves are an essential tool for engineers working in non-destructive evaluation and for scientists studying wave phenomena. Dispersion curves are typically computed for low or zero attenuation and presented in two or three dimensional plots. The former do not always provide a clear and complete picture of the dispersion loci and the latter are very difficult to obtain when high values of attenuation are involved and arbitrary anisotropy is considered in single or multi-layered systems. As a consequence, drawing correct and reliable conclusions is a challenging task in the modern applications that often utilize multi-layered anisotropic viscoelastic materials.These challenges are overcome here by using a spectral collocation method (SCM) to robustly find dispersion curves in the most complicated cases of high attenuation and arbitrary anisotropy. Solutions are then plotted in three-dimensional frequency-complex wavenumber space, thus gaining much deeper insight into the nature of these problems. The cases studied range from classical examples, which validate this approach, to new ones involving materials up to the most general triclinic class for both flat and cylindrical geometry in multi-layered systems. The apparent crossing of modes within the same symmetry family in viscoelastic media is also explained and clarified by the results. Finally, the consequences of the centre of symmetry, present in every crystal class, on the solutions are discussed.

Journal article

Quintanilla FH, Fan Z, Lowe MJS, Craster RVet al., 2015,

Guided waves' dispersion curves in anisotropic viscoelastic single- and multi-layered media

, Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, Vol: 471, Pages: 1-23, ISSN: 1364-5021

Guided waves propagating in lossy media are encountered in many problems across different areas of physics such as electromagnetism, elasticity and solid-state physics. They also constitute essential tools in several branches of engineering, aerospace and aircraft engineering, and structural health monitoring for instance. Waveguides also play a central role in many non-destructive evaluation applications. It is of paramount importance to accurately represent the material of the waveguide to obtain reliable and robust information about the guided waves that might be excited in the structure. A reasonable approximation to real solids is the perfectly elastic approach where the frictional losses within the solid are ignored. However, a more realistic approach is to represent the solid as a viscoelastic medium with attenuation for which the dispersion curves of the modes are, in general, different from their elastic counterparts. Existing methods are capable of calculating dispersion curves for attenuated modes but they can be troublesome to find and the solutions are not as reliable as in the perfectly elastic case. In this paper, in order to achieve robust and accurate results for viscoelasticity a spectral collocation method is developed to compute the dispersion curves in generally anisotropic viscoelastic media in flat and cylindrical geometry. Two of the most popular models to account for material damping, Kelvin–Voigt and Hysteretic, are used in various cases of interest. These include orthorhombic and triclinic materials in single- or multi-layered arrays. Also, and due to its importance in industry, a section is devoted to pipes filled with viscous fluids. The results are validated by comparison with those from semi-analytical finite-element simulations.

Journal article

Van Pamel A, Brett CR, Huthwaite P, Lowe MJSet al., 2015,

Finite element modelling of elastic wave scattering within a polycrystalline material in two and three dimensions

, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol: 138, Pages: 2326-2336, ISSN: 0001-4966

Finite element modelling is a promising tool for further progressing the development of ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation of polycrystalline materials. Yet its widespread adoption has been held back due to a high computational cost, which has restricted current works to relatively small models and to two dimensions. However, the emergence of sufficiently powerful computing, such as highly efficient solutions on graphics processors, is enabling a step improvement in possibilities. This article aims to realise those capabilities to simulate ultrasonic scattering of longitudinal waves in an equiaxed polycrystalline material in both two (2D) and three dimensions (3D). The modelling relies on an established Voronoi approach to randomly generate a representative grain morphology. It is shown that both 2D and 3D numerical data show good agreement across a range of scattering regimes in comparison to well-established theoretical predictions for attenuation and phase velocity. In addition, 2D parametric studies illustrate the mesh sampling requirements for two different types of mesh to ensure modelling accuracy and present useful guidelines for future works. Modelling limitations are also shown. It is found that 2D models reduce the scattering mechanism in the Rayleigh regime.

Journal article

Pettit JR, Walker AE, Lowe MJS, 2015,

Improved Detection of Rough Defects for Ultrasonic Nondestructive Evaluation Inspections Based on Finite Element Modeling of Elastic Wave Scattering

, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control, Vol: 62, Pages: 1797-1808, ISSN: 0885-3010

Defects which possess rough surfaces greatly affectultrasonic wave scattering behaviour, usually reducing the magnitudeof reflected signals. Understanding and accurately predictingthe influence of roughness on signal amplitudes is crucial,especially in Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) for the inspectionof safety-critical components. An extension of Kirchhoff theoryhas formed the basis for many practical applications; however, itis widely recognised that these predictions are pessimistic owingto analytical approximations. A numerical full field modellingapproach does not fall victim to such limitations. Here, a FiniteElement (FE) modelling approach is used to develop a realisticmethodology for the prediction of expected back-scattering fromrough defects. The ultrasonic backscatter from multiple roughsurfaces defined by the same statistical class is calculated fornormal and oblique incidence. Results from FE models arecompared with Kirchhoff theory predictions and experimentalmeasurements in order to establish confidence in the newapproach. At lower levels of roughness excellent agreement isobserved between Kirchhoff theory, FE and experimental data,whilst at higher values the pessimism of Kirchhoff theory isconfirmed. An important distinction is made between the total,coherent and diffuse signals and it is observed, significantly, thatthe total signal amplitude is representative of the informationobtained during an inspection. This analysis provides a robustbasis for a less sensitive, yet safe, threshold for inspection ofrough defects.

Journal article

Lan B, Lowe M, DUNNE F, 2015,

A spherical harmonic approach for the determination of HCP texture from ultrasound: a solution to the inverse problem

, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, Vol: 83, Pages: 179-198, ISSN: 0022-5096

A new spherical convolution approach has been presented which couples HCP single crystal wave speed (the kernel function) with polycrystal c-axis pole distribution function to give the resultant polycrystal wave speed response. The three functions have been expressed as spherical harmonic expansions thus enabling application of the de-convolution technique to enable any one of the three to be determined from knowledge of the other two. Hence, the forward problem of determination of polycrystal wave speed from knowledge of single crystal wave speed response and the polycrystal pole distribution has been solved for a broad range of experimentally representative HCP polycrystal textures. The technique provides near-perfect representation of the sensitivity of wave speed to polycrystal texture as well as quantitative prediction of polycrystal wave speed. More importantly, a solution to the inverse problem is presented in which texture, as a c-axis distribution function, is determined from knowledge of the kernel function and the polycrystal wave speed response. It has also been explained why it has been widely reported in the literature that only texture coefficients up to 4th degree may be obtained from ultrasonic measurements. Finally, the de-convolution approach presented provides the potential for the measurement of polycrystal texture from ultrasonic wave speed measurements.

Journal article

Dobson, Cawley P, 2015,

Independent Component Analysis for Improved Defect Detection in Guided Wave Monitoring

, Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, Vol: 104, Pages: 1620-1631, ISSN: 0020-3270

Guided wave sensors are widely used in a number of industries and have found particular application in the oil and gas industry for the inspection of pipework. Traditionally this type of sensor was used for one-off inspections, but in recent years there has been a move towards permanent installation of the sensor. This has enabled highly repeatable readings of the same section of pipe, potentially allowing improvements in defect detection and classification. This paper proposes a novel approach using independent component analysis to decompose repeat guided wave signals into constituent independent components. This separates the defect from coherent noise caused by changing environmental conditions, improving detectability. This paper demonstrates independent component analysis applied to guided wave signals from a range of industrial inspection scenarios. The analysis is performed on test data from pipe loops that have been subject to multiple temperature cycles both in undamaged and damaged states. In addition to processing data from experimental damaged conditions, simulated damage signals have been added to “undamaged” experimental data, so enabling multiple different damage scenarios to be investigated. The algorithm has also been used to process guided wave signals from finite element simulations of a pipe with distributed shallow general corrosion, within which there is a patch of severe corrosion. In all these scenarios, the independent component analysis algorithm was able to extract the defect signal, rejecting coherent noise.

Journal article

Fan Z, Mark AF, Lowe MJS, Withers PJet al., 2015,

Nonintrusive estimation of anisotropic stiffness maps of heterogeneous steel welds for the improvement of ultrasonic array inspection

, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, Vol: 62, Pages: 1530-1543, ISSN: 0885-3010

It is challenging to inspect austenitic welds nondestructively using ultrasonic waves because the spatially varying elastic anisotropy of weld microstructures can lead to the deviation of ultrasound. Models have been developed to predict the propagation of ultrasound in such welds once the weld stiffness heterogeneity is known. Consequently, it is desirable to have a means of measuring the variation in elastic anisotropy experimentally so as to be able to correct for deviations in ultrasonic pathways for the improvement of weld inspection. This paper investigates the use of external nonintrusive ultrasonic array measurements to construct such weld stiffness maps, representing the orientation of the stiffness tensor according to location in the weld cross section. An inverse model based on a genetic algorithm has been developed to recover a small number of key parameters in an approximate model of the weld map, making use of ultrasonic array measurements. The approximate model of the weld map uses the Modeling of anIsotropy based on Notebook of Arcwelding (MINA) formulation, which is one of the representations that has been proposed by other researchers to provide a simple, yet physically based, description of the overall variations of orientations of the stiffness tensors over the weld cross section. The choice of sensitive ultrasonic modes as well as the best monitoring positions have been discussed to achieve a robust inversion. Experiments have been carried out on a 60-mm-thick multipass tungsten inert gas (TIG) weld to validate the findings of the modeling, showing very good agreement. This work shows that ultrasonic array measurements can be used on a single side of a butt-welded plate, such that there is no need to access the remote side, to construct an approximate but useful weld map of the spatial variations in anisotropic stiffness orientation that occur within the weld.

Conference paper

Corcoran J, Nagy PB, Cawley P, 2015,

Potential Drop Monitoring of Creep Damage at a Weld

, 42nd Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation (QNDE), Publisher: American Institute of Physics (AIP), ISSN: 1551-7616

Creep failure at welds will often be the life limiting factor for pressurised power station components, offering a site for local damage accumulation. Monitoring the creep state of welds will be of great value to power station management and potential drop monitoring may provide a useful tool. This paper provides a preliminary study of potential drop monitoring of creep damage at a weldment, suggesting a measurement arrangement for a previously documented quasi-DC technique that is well suited to the application. The industrial context of the problem of creep damage at a weldment is explored, together with a numerical simulation of the effect of cracking, finally, a cross-weld accelerated creep test demonstrating the promise of the technique is presented.

Conference paper

Van Pamel A, Huthwaite P, Brett CR, Lowe MJSet al., 2015,

Finite Element Modelling of Wave Propagation in Highly Scattering Materials

, 42nd Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation (QNDE), Publisher: American Institute of Physics (AIP), ISSN: 1551-7616

Ultrasonic inspection of highly scattering materials presents challenges for industry. This article describes a Finite Element modelling methodology to simulate wave propagation within polycrystalline materials. Concerns are answered regarding its required mesh sampling and ability to capture the complex scattering physics. It is shown that grain scattering phenomena are closely reproduced across a range of scattering regimes. The procedure is subsequently applied to investigate the optimal configuration of an array inspecting such a material. It is found that in certain situations, separating emitter and receiver can be advantageous as this reduces the received backscatter.

Conference paper

Haith MI, Ewert U, Hohendorf S, Bellon C, Deresch A, Huthwaite P, Lowe MJS, Zscherpel Uet al., 2015,

Modelling Based Radiography for NDE of Subsea Pipelines

, 42nd Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation (QNDE), Publisher: American Institute of Physics (AIP), ISSN: 1551-7616

This work presents the use of limited experimental measurements to develop a set of calibrated simulation parameters that can then be used for reliable simulation of subsea pipeline inspections. The modelling software aRTist is used as the simulation tool, and the calibration is through comparison with experimental images of a well characterised sample in a water tank. Image quality parameters such as signal-to-noise ratio, contrast and basic spatial resolution are compared with the aim of matching simulated values to experimental results. Currently the model is partially calibrated, with signal-to-noise ratio successfully matched while differences are still found in contrast-to-noise ratio comparisons. This means that measurements depending on absolute intensity are not accurate enough in the simulation at this stage. However, the simulation is found to be accurate for wall thickness measurements in tangential images, which are not based on absolute intensity, with simulated and experimental cases producing similar results

Conference paper

Ewert U, Tschaikner M, Hohendorf S, Bellon C, Haith MI, Huthwaite P, Lowe MJSet al., 2015,

Corrosion Monitoring with Tangential Radiography and Limited View Computed Tomography

, 42nd Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation (QNDE), Publisher: American Institute of Physics (AIP), ISSN: 1551-7616

Accurate and reliable detection of subsea pipeline corrosion is required in order to verify the integrity of the pipeline. A laboratory trial was conducted with a representative pipe sample. The accurate measurement of the wall thickness and corrosion was performed with high energy X-rays and a digital detector array. A 7.5 MV betatron was used to penetrate a stepped pipe and a welded test pipe of 3 m length and 327 mm outer diameter, with different artificial corrosion areas in the 24 mm thick steel wall. The radiographs were taken with a 40 x 40 cm² digital detector array, which was not large enough to cover the complete pipe diameter after magnification. A C-arm based geometry was tested to evaluate the potential for automated inspection in field. The primary goal was the accurate measurement of wall thickness conforming to the standard. The same geometry was used to explore the ability of a C-arm based scanner in asymmetric mode for computed tomography (CT) measurement, taking projections covering only two thirds of the pipe diameter. The technique was optimized with the modelling software aRTist. A full volume of the pipe was reconstructed and the CT data set was used for reverse engineering, providing a CAD file for further aRTist simulations to explore the technique for subsea inspections.

Conference paper

Huthwaite P, Lowe M, Cawley P, 2015,

Guided Wave Tomography Performance Analysis

, 42nd Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation (QNDE), Publisher: American Institute of Physics (AIP), ISSN: 1551-7616

Quantifying wall loss caused by corrosion is a significant challenge for the petrochemical industry. Corrosion commonly occurs at pipe supports, where surface access for inspection is limited. Guided wave tomography is pursued as a solution to this: guided waves are transmitted through the region of interest from an array, and tomographic reconstruction techniques are applied to the measured signals in order to produce a map of thickness. There are many parameters in the system which can affect the performance; this paper investigates how the accuracy varies as defect width and depth, operating frequency and guided wave mode are all changed. For the S0 mode, the best performance was seen around 170kHz on the 10mm plate, with poor performance seen at almost all other frequencies. A0 showed better performance across a broad range of frequencies, with resolution improving with frequency as the wavelength reduced. However, it was shown that the resolution limit did drop relative to the wavelength, limiting the performance at high frequencies slightly.

Conference paper

Egerton JS, Lowe MJS, Halai HV, Huthwaite Pet al., 2015,

Improved FE Simulation of Ultrasound in Plastics

, 42nd Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation (QNDE), Publisher: American Institute of Physics (AIP), ISSN: 1551-7616

Some UK and US nuclear power stations have begun introducing high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipes to certain cooling water circuits. HDPE offers improved performance over existing pipe materials, such as cast iron, by not corroding in-ternally or externally, yet occasional defects form in HDPE pipe fusion joints at the production stage. This necessitates suitable volumetric NDE to safely and reliably assess joint integrity. Ultrasonic NDE is the most viable current technique, but improved inspection capability is needed, given that the challenges of NDE of plastics differ significantly from those of metals. This also necessitates an accurate and reliable wave propagation simulation technique, such as finite-element (FE) modelling. Accurate FE modelling of ultrasound in high-density polyethylene (HDPE) must account for frequency-dependent behaviour but, the most ap-parent way to do so – frequency domain FE modelling – is prohibitively computationally expensive and potentially impossible to solve for all but the smallest models. Here we present a multiband time domain FE simulation technique to address this. The proposed multiband technique is a computationally efficient and accurate approach to time domain FE modelling of ultrasonic wave propagation. It could, for example, be used to validate the NDE of a large range of candidate fusion joint defects in HDPE. The proposed model uses a small number of time domain FE simulations at individual frequency bands that together cover the bandwidth of interest. The frequency dependence of acoustic properties of ultrasound is accurately represented for HDPE and could readily be applied to other media.

Journal article

Leinov E, Lowe MJS, Cawley P, 2015,

Investigation of guided wave propagation and attenuation in pipe buried in sand

, Journal of Sound and Vibration, Vol: 347, Pages: 96-114, ISSN: 0022-460X

Long-range guided wave testing is a well-established method for detection of corrosion defects in pipelines. The method is currently used routinely for above ground pipelines in a variety of industries, e.g. petrochemical and energy. When the method is applied to pipes buried in soil, test ranges tend to be significantly compromised and unpredictable due to attenuation of the guided wave resulting from energy leakage into the embedding soil. The attenuation characteristics of guided wave propagation in an 8 in. pipe buried in sand are investigated using a laboratory full-scale experimental rig and model predictions. We report measurements of attenuation of the T(0,1) and L(0,2) guided wave modes over a range of sand conditions, including loose, compacted, mechanically compacted, water saturated and drained. Attenuation values are found to be in the range of 1.65–5.5 dB/m and 0.98–3.2 dB/m for the torsional and longitudinal modes, respectively, over the frequency of 11–34 kHz. The application of overburden pressure modifies the compaction of the sand and increases the attenuation. Mechanical compaction of the sand yields similar attenuation values to those obtained with applied overburden pressure. The attenuation decreases in the fully water-saturated sand, and increases in drained sand to values comparable with those obtained for compacted sand. Attenuation measurements are compared with Disperse software model predictions and confirm that the attenuation phenomenon in buried pipes is essentially governed by the bulk shear velocity in the sand. The attenuation behaviour of the torsional guided wave mode is found not to be captured by a uniform soil model; comparison with predictions obtained with the Disperse software suggest that this is likely to be due to a layer of sand adhering to the surface of the pipe.

Journal article

Seher M, Huthwaite P, Lowe MJS, Nagy PBet al., 2015,

Model-Based Design of Low Frequency Lamb Wave EMATs for Mode Selectivity

, Journal of Nondestructive Evaluation, Vol: 34, ISSN: 1573-4862

A low-frequency, omni-directional A0 Lamb wave ElectroMagnetic Acoustic Transducer (EMAT) is developed for applications in guided wave tomography, operating at 50 kHz on a 10 mm thick steel plate. The key objective is to excite an acceptably pure A0 wave mode in relation to the S0 mode, which can also be present at this operating point and is desired to be suppressed by approximately 30 dB. For that, a parametric Finite Element (FE) model of the design concept is implemented in a commercially available FE software, where the bias magnetic field is calculated initially, then combined with the eddy current caused by the induction coil to produce a force. A numerical optimization process employing a genetic algorithm is set up and the EMAT design is optimized to yield an improved A0 mode selectivity. The parameters subjected to optimization are the magnet diameter and the magnet lift-off, which control the direction of the exciting force in the skin depth layer and therefore the mode selectivity. Although there are three possible electromagnetic acoustic interaction mechanisms, the optimisation considers only the Lorentz force, as its performance surface contains a clear optimum and from the optimised design a physical prototype is built. The FE model is validated against measurements on an aluminium plate for the Lorentz force excitation mechanism and on a steel plate for both the Lorentz and magnetisation force. For the steel plate, it is found that only considering the Lorentz force leads to a significant overestimation of the mode selectivity, as the S0 amplitude is underestimated by the Lorentz force, but the A0 amplitude remains mainly uninfluenced. Further, it has been found that additionally including the magnetisation force into the optimisation leads to a better mode selectivity, however, the optimisation drives the optimum to a minimum magnet diameter and therefore reduces the EMAT sensitivity. In a numerical study robustness is shown for fair

Journal article

Lan B, lowe M, dunne F, 2015,

A generalized spherical harmonic deconvolution to obtain texture of cubic materials from ultrasonic wave speed

, Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids, Vol: 83, Pages: 221-242, ISSN: 0022-5096

In this paper, the spherical harmonic convolution approach for HCP materials (Lan et al., 2015) is extended into a generalised form for the principal purpose of bulk texture determination in cubic polycrystals from ultrasonic wave speed measurements. It is demonstrated that the wave speed function of a general single crystal convolves with the polycrystal Orientation Distribution Function (ODF) to make the resultant polycrystal wave speed function such that when the three functions are expressed in harmonic expansions, the coefficients of any one function may be determined from the coefficients of the other two. All three Euler angles are taken into account in the description of the ODF such that the theorem applies for all general crystal systems.The forward problem of predicting polycrystal wave speed with knowledge of single crystal properties and the ODF is solved for all general cases, with validation carried out on cubic textures showing strong sensitivity to texture and excellent quantitative accuracy in predicted wave speed amplitudes. Importantly, it is also revealed by the theorem that the cubic structure is one of only two crystal systems (the other being HCP) whose orientation distributions can be inversely determined from polycrystal wave velocities by virtue of their respective crystal symmetries. Proof of principle is then established by recovering the ODFs of representative cubic textures solely from the wave velocities generated from a computational model using these texture inputs, and excellent accuracies are achieved in the recovered ODF coefficients as well as the resultant pole figures. Hence the methodology is argued to provide a powerful technique for wave propagation studies and bulk texture measurement in cubic polycrystals and beyond.Keywords Texture; Generalised spherical convolution; Ultrasound; Cubic polycrystals

Journal article

Shi F, Choi W, Lowe MJS, Skelton EA, Craster RVet al., 2015,

The validity of Kirchhoff theory for scattering of elastic waves from rough surfaces

, PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY A-MATHEMATICAL PHYSICAL AND ENGINEERING SCIENCES, Vol: 471, ISSN: 1364-5021

Journal article

Huthwaite P, Seher M, 2015,

Robust Helical Path Separation for Thickness Mapping of Pipes by Guided Wave Tomography

, IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control, Vol: 62, Pages: 927-938, ISSN: 1525-8955

Pipe wall loss caused by corrosion can be quantifiedacross an area by transmitting guided Lamb waves throughthe region and measuring the resulting signals. Typically thedispersive relationship for these waves, which means thatwave velocity is a known function of thickness, is exploited,enabling the wall thickness to be determined from a velocityreconstruction. The accuracy and quality of this reconstructionis commonly limited by the angle of view available from thetransducer arrays. These arrays are often attached as a pairof ring arrays on either side of the inspected region, and dueto the cylindrical nature of the pipe, waves are able to travelin an infinite number of helical paths between any two transducers.The first arrivals can be separated relatively easily bytime gating, but by using just these components the angle ofview is severely restricted. To improve the viewing angle, it isnecessary to separate the wavepackets. This paper provides anoutline of a separation approach: initially the waves are backpropagatedto their source to align the different signals, then afiltering technique is applied to select the desired components.The technique is applied to experimental data and demonstratedto robustly separate the signals

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