General Electric Company
Ultrasonic inspection methods and systems

Abstract:

Methods and systems for ultrasonic inspection are presented. For instance, a thin object or an object including a thin coating may be inspected. An ultrasonic signal is transmitted to the object. The dimension of the feature of the object is about one to ten wavelengths of the ultrasonic signal. An ultrasonic signal is received from the object, and includes reflections received from a back surface of the object or coating. The ultrasonic signal is processed by auto-correlating the received ultrasonic signal. The dimension of the object is measured from the processed ultrasonic signal. In one example, the received ultrasonic signal includes reflections from the object, and correlating provides a measure of the periodicity of the reflections in determining the processed ultrasonic signal. In another example, an autocorrelation is used to provide an estimate of the ultrasonic probe response which is used to improve the signal to noise ratio of additional signals received from that probe.