Ill-posed and well-posed problems in inverse elastodynamic scattering for nondestructive evaluation

The practical significance of ill-posedness in a data reduction problem is reviewed. Inverse elastodynamic scattering is shown to be ill-posed in general, although suitably restricted problems may be well-posed. These results underscore the need to analyze carefully the errors of data reduction problems in NDE, and to focus attention on final results of an NDE exercise, rather than on intermediate steps.