Guided Wave Tomography Based on Full Waveform Inversion

In this paper, a guided wave tomography method based on full waveform inversion (FWI) is developed for accurate and high-resolution reconstruction of the remaining wall thickness in isotropic plates. The forward model is computed in the frequency domain by solving a full-wave equation in a two-dimensional (2-D) acoustic model, accounting for higher order effects such as diffractions and multiple scattering. Both numerical simulations and experiments were carried out to obtain the signals of a dispersive guided mode propagating through defects. The inversion was based on local optimization of a waveform misfit function between modeled and measured data, and was applied iteratively to discrete frequency components from low to high frequencies. The resulting wave velocity maps were then converted to thickness maps by the dispersion characteristics of selected guided modes. The results suggest that the FWI method is capable to reconstruct the thickness map of a irregularly shaped defect accurately on a 10-mm-thick plate with the thickness error within 0.5 mm.