MEASUREMENT OF CORROSION WITH CURVED ULTRASONIC TRANSDUCER; RULE-BASED PROCESSING OF FULL ECHO WAVEFORMS; PREPROCESSING AND TRANSMITTING ECHO WAVEFORM INFORMATION

摘要

An acoustic transducer (102) comprises a curved surface (102) adapted to the internal surfaces (108) or external to a target surface (100) such as cylindrical drill. An excitation pulse sequence causes the emission by the transducer a series of high frequency pulses (308) to the tubular rods. the characteristics of the tubular surfaces is determined, including the location, size and depth of any hollow due to corrosion of the tubular surfaces on the basis of a waveform of full echo. A standardized Expert System analyzes the full waveform of the echo pulses reflected by the duct rod system to determine the most likely surface characteristics that produced the waveform of full echo. More specifically, the Expert System uses knowledge about the acoustic properties of the target medium and constraints selected by an expert to determine which signal structures which are significant and signal structures are misleading. The invention also provides pre-processing and transmitting information. It reduces the absolute amount of information transmitted without reducing the amount of transmitted significant information. It allows to transmit more meaningful information than conventional transmission systems. It also reduces the processing of information to the destination.