Measurement of Rayleigh Wave Beams Using Angle Beam Wedge Transducers as the Transmitter and Receiver with Consideration of Beam Spreading

A theoretical model, along with experimental verification, is developed to describe the generation, propagation and reception of a Rayleigh wave using angle beam wedge transducers. The Rayleigh wave generation process using an angle beam wedge transducer is analyzed, and the actual Rayleigh wave sound source distributions are evaluated numerically. Based on the reciprocity theorem and considering the actual sound source, the Rayleigh wave beams are modeled using an area integral method. The leaky Rayleigh wave theory is introduced to investigate the reception of the Rayleigh wave using the angle beam wedge transducers, and the effects of the wave spreading in the wedge and transducer size are considered in the reception process. The effects of attenuations of the Rayleigh wave and leaky Rayleigh wave are discussed, and the received wave results with different sizes of receivers are compared. The experiments are conducted using two angle beam wedge transducers to measure the Rayleigh wave, and the measurement results are compared with the predictions using different theoretical models. It is shown that the proposed model which considers the wave spreading in both the sample and wedges can be used to interpret the measurements reasonably.