Longitudinal wave scattering from rough crack-like defects

The roughness of crack-like defects affects ultrasonic wave scattering and this, in turn, affects defect detection and characterization. The first part of this paper is concerned with the efficient numerical modeling of scattering from rough cracks, i.e., a finite element local scattering (FELS) model. The scattered field is presented in the form of a scattering matrix, which describes the far-field scattering coefficient for all possible combinations of incident and scattering directions. The scattering matrices for many different realizations of rough cracks are simulated using both a FELS model and a model based on the Kirchhoff approximation. It is shown that the difference between scattering matrices extracted from the Kirchhoff model and the FELS model is less than 8%, for rough cracks with a standard deviation less than 0.3 wavelengths and a correlation length longer than 0.5 wavelengths, at incident and scattering angles ranging from -80° to 80° relative to the normal direction of the mean surface. Because the Kirchhoff model is significantly more efficient than the FELS model, it is used for subsequent simulations in which many realizations of rough cracks are studied to gain insight into the statistical nature of the scattering process. In line with previous work, a distinction is made between the coherent and diffuse contributions to the overall scattered field, in which the former represents the ensemble average over multiple surface realizations. The coherent and diffuse contributions of scattered field from various types of rough cracks are simulated. It is shown that surface roughness directly affects the coherent contribution to scattering behavior, whereas the diffuse contribution is affected by both surface roughness and correlation length, especially for rougher cracks.