High-precision Versatile Ultrasonic Flow Meters Based on Matrix Transducer Arrays

Ultrasonic flow meters are widely applied to measure flow in a variety of applications. The vast majority of ultrasonic flow meters are based on the measurement of the transit time of an acoustic pulse through the fluid. This can either be done in-line, by inserting a spool piece with ultrasonic transducers into the pipe carrying the fluid, or...

Exploiting nonlinear wave propagation to improve the precision of ultrasonic flow meters

Acoustic wave propagation in ultrasonic flow measurements is typically assumed to be linear and reciprocal. However, if the transmitting transducer generates a sufficiently high pressure, nonlinear wave propagation effects become significant. In flow measurements, this would translate into more information to estimate the flow and therefore a...

Computation of nonlinear ultrasound fields using a linearized contrast source method

Nonlinear ultrasound is important in medical diagnostics because imaging of the higher harmonics improves resolution and reduces scattering artifacts. Second harmonic imaging is currently standard, and higher harmonic imaging is under investigation. The efficient development of novel imaging modalities and equipment requires accurate simulations...

Deriving content-specific measures of room acoustic perception using a binaural, nonlinear auditory model

Acousticians generally assess the acoustic qualities of a concert hall or any other room using impulse response-based measures such as the reverberation time, clarity index, and others. These parameters are used to predict perceptual attributes related to the acoustic qualities of the room. Various studies show that these physical measures are...

Linearization strategies for the Iterative Nonlinear Contrast Source method for full-wave simulation of nonlinear ultrasound fields

The Iterative Nonlinear Contrast Source (INCS) method is a full-wave method for the accurate computation of wide-angle, pulsed, nonlinear ultrasound fields appearing in, e.g., medical echoscopy. The method is based on the Westervelt equation and considers the occurring nonlinear term as a distributed contrast source that operates in a linear...

Comparison of fundamental, second harmonic, and superharmonic imaging: A simulation study

In medical ultrasound, fundamental imaging (FI) uses the reflected echoes from the same spectral band as that of the emitted pulse. The transmission frequency determines the trade-off between penetration depth and spatial resolution. Tissue harmonic imaging (THI) employs the second harmonic of the emitted frequency band to construct images....

A contrast source method for nonlinear acoustic wave fields in media with spatially inhomogeneous attenuation

Experimental data reveals that attenuation is an important phenomenon in medical ultrasound. Attenuation is particularly important for medical applications based on nonlinear acoustics, since higher harmonics experience higher attenuation than the fundamental. Here, a method is presented to accurately solve the wave equation for nonlinear...

An iterative method for the computation of nonlinear, wide-angle, pulsed acoustic fields of medical diagnostic transducers

The development and optimization of medical ultrasound transducers and imaging modalities require a computational method that accurately predicts the nonlinear acoustic pressure field. A prospective method should provide the wide-angle, pulsed field emitted by an arbitrary planar source distribution and propagating in a three-dimensional, large...

Modeling of nonlinear medical diagnostic ultrasound

In this PhD Thesis, a numerical method is described that accurately predicts the pulsed acoustic pressure field generated by a medical diagnostic phased array transducer in a nonlinear acoustic medium. The method is called the Iterative Nonlinear Contrast Source (INCS) method, and it is capable of handling a large-scale, threedimensional domain...

Prediction of flow-induced noise using the expansion about incompressible flow approach

In the present paper an Expansion about Incompressible Flow approach, as suggested by Shen and Sørensen1, will be used and discussed for the simulation of flow-induced sound at low Mach numbers. The method consists of two parts: First solving for the incompressible, viscous flow field, and second computing the fluctuating acoustic field. As a...

Force scheme applied to flux reconstruction in the numerical simulation of nonlinear acoustic problems

Nonlinear acoustic waves have many applications in very different fields of industry. The problem considered in this work consists of predicting the behaviour of gas filling a one dimensional tube when suffering the action of very high frequency waves. The numerical technique applied to solve this problem is a third order finite volume method...

Numerical solution of nonlinear acoustic wave problems employing a green's function approach

The design of phased array transducers for medical diagnostic ultrasound asks for an understanding of the nonlinear propagation of acoustic wavefields. Most existing numerical models are based on the linearized model equations, but in the recent decades several numerical models have been developed that incorporate weak nonlinear propagation as...

Numerical solution of nonlinear acoustic wave problems employing a green's function approach

The design of phased array transducers for medical diagnostic ultrasound asks for an understanding of the nonlinear propagation of acoustic wavefields. Most existing numerical models are based on the linearized model equations, but in the recent decades several numerical models have been developed that incorporate weak nonlinear propagation as...