Ultrasonic wave and transducer modeling with the finite integration technique (FIT)

This paper presents in a unified way numerical methods for the time-domain modeling of ultrasonic waves and coupled ultrasonic-electromagnetic transducers. The modeling tools are based on the direct discretization of underlying governing field equations in integral form by applying the so-called finite integration technique on a staggered grid complex in space and time. This yields discrete grid equations, which can be written in matrix form introducing well-defined discrete topological matrix operators. Those operators allow a consistent formulation of the discrete grid equations insuring the properties of the governing equations. The simple structure of the discrete grid equations allows a very efficient implementation on high performance computers, workstations, personal computers and even state-of-the-art laptops. The potential of the numerical codes is presented for selected applications, where the paper mainly focuses on applications in ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation.