Find the hidden flaws
As their names suggest, Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) and Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) are methods of examining materials or structures without damaging or destroying them or affecting their performance. While Xrays, eddy currents, and magnetic particles have been used to develop NDE/NDT tools, ultrasound is the more common and safer approach, particularly for detecting flaws. As in sonar applications, sound waves are sent out by one or more transducers; the waves bounce off the target structure and their echoes form an image of it. The famed Soviet scientist Sergei Y. Sokolov is credited with employing ultrasound to detect flaws as early as 1934. Since then, improvements in naval sonar that resulted from the invention of pulsed ultrasound and advanced piezoelectric materials have led to parallel and rapid advances in the NDE/NDT field.

PZFlex is used in various NDE/NDT applications, from modeling transducers to predicting acoustic wave propagation through test structures. Substantial work has been carried out regarding the propagation of Lamb waves in plate and pipe structures and the waves’ interaction with defects inside the structures. Lamb waves are a specialized form of surface wave that is evident only when the test structure’s thickness is reduced to a few wavelengths. PZFlex is also well suited to aid the NDE/NDT community in its application of imaging techniques originally developed by the biomedical industry, such as multi-element arrays and acoustic beam steering. Traditional analytical methods are inadequate for industrial studies of this type, especially when they carried out on more advanced structures and materials, such as carbon fiber composites and anisotropics.