Modeling ultrasonic transducers is an important aspect of research in nondestructive evaluation and testing. In most nondestructive evaluation applications, the ultrasonic transducers are traditionally modeled as: (1) point sources generating spherical wave fronts (2) line sources generating cylindrical wave fronts, or (3) planar surfaces generating plane wave fronts. In reality, the transducer front face has finite dimensions; it is neither point source nor planar source because the ultrasound that emits from a piezoelectric transducer does not originate from a point or an infinite plane, but instead originates from the finite surface of the piezoelectric element with flat or curved front face.; Analytically modeling the fields radiated by ultrasonic transducers is a very difficult task because of the large number of possible transducer types, sizes and configurations that are used in practice. In this study, a semi analytical technique the Distributed Point Source Method (DPSM) is adapted to model ultrasonic transducers. The DPSM discretizes the transducer surface into a finite number of elemental surfaces. As a result, the complexity associated with the discretization of the three-dimensional problem geometry as done in the finite element technique is reduced. In the DPSM technique, the fundamental governing equations for elastic wave propagation in a fluid and in a solid are solved. For this reason, the DPSM technique is called a semi-analytical technique.; In this research, computer codes for computing the ultrasonic field in a three dimensional inhomogeneous medium in front of a transducer of finite dimension have been written in MatLab.; Two different cases are considered in this study, nonhomogeneous fluid and fluid-solid interface. Both normal and inclined incidence cases are investigated. This investigation shows that DPSM is an efficient technique for modeling ultrasonic transducers in nonhomogeneous media.
展开▼