Modeling of ultrasound tomographic imaging for non-destructive inspection of underwater structures

Abstract

In non-destructive inspection regular ultrasound techniques provide detection and estimate size of specific defects or undesired objects in different structures. The method of tomographic imaging modeled in this paper can provide the correct position and shape of the object inside underwater structures to be inspected. The proposed method is based on 2-D full waveform inversion of reflected ultrasound field registered by the array of sensors at a short distance from the target object. The computationally intensive algorithm for tomographic image reconstruction is described and tested with focus on underwater pipeline ultrasound inspection. The results of numerical modeling using parallel calculations and physical modeling are presented and discussed.