Ultrasonic beam propagation in highly anisotropic materials simulated by multi-Gaussian beams

The necessity of nondestructively inspecting fiber-reinforced composites, austenitic steels, and other inherently anisotropic materials has stimulated considerable interest in developing beam models for anisotropic media. The properties of slowness surface play a key role in the beam models based on the paraxial approximation. In this paper, we apply a modular muiti-Gaussian beam (MMGB) model to study the effects of material anisotropy on ultrasonic beam profile. It is shown that the anisotropic effects of beam skew and excess beam divergence enter into the MMGB model through parameters defining the slope and curvature of the slowness surface. The overall beam profile is found when the quasilongitudinal (qL) beam propagates in the symmetry plane of a transversely isotropic gr/ep composite. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the effects of these parameters on ultrasonic beam diffraction and beam skew. The MMGB calculations are also checked by comparing the anisotropy factor and beam skew angle with other analytical solutions.