VARIABLE SPLIT APERTURE PROCESSING OF FULL MATRIX CAPTURE PHASED ARRAY DATA

Work is being conducted to develop phased array inspection of stainless steel welded pipes. Defects can occur anywhere along the weld fusion face. Optimum inspection performance across the entire weld face can be facilitated by collecting data as Full Matrix Capture (FMC) and applying a processing technique that allows focusing to be ideal for every pixel within the Bscan image. Further improvements to the Bscan image can be made by having a split aperture that varies as a function of focal depth. This paper introduces the FMC principle and describes the variable split aperture signal processing. The inspections were also modeled using the CEA CIVA software which was compared to experimental results.