Ultrasonic probe and inspection method and system

摘要

A method of inspecting a component (10) includes immersing the component in a coupling medium (22) with material velocity C w and immersing an ultrasonic (UT) probe (20) having at least one transducer (12) in the coupling medium. The UT probe has a convex lens (14) with acoustic velocity C L and an acoustic impedance less than about 2.5 x 10 6 Rayls. The method further includes exciting the transducer to produce an UT pulse directed into the component and generating echo signals using the transducer as a receive element (12). An UT inspection system (30) includes UT probe, a pulser/receiver (32) configured to supply signal excitation pulses to the transducer element at a pulse repetition frequency (prf) of at least about 1000 Hz and a scanner (34) configured to scan the component with the UT probe at a scanning rate equal to the prf times a scanning increment.