Ultrasonic scan data is displayed within a display (10) and is arranged in a plurality of two and three-dimensional colored displays (20, 30, 40, 50). A C-scan display (40) is a composite plot of a region of interest using color to designate echo amplitude. The composite plot (40) is time-gated to limit the range of depths of data presented and thereby limit the plot to a thin section such as a surface. Surface breaking discontinuities (100) are visible as highly colored echoes within this C-scan display (40). Within C-scan display (40), once a discontinuity such as a reflector is detected, additional gates (150-165) may be set which permit other specialized displays such as D-scan (50) and B-scan (20) windows to portray the discontinuities. The D-scan plots index direction (54) against time (52), and readily displays circumferential reflectors (130-145) therein, while also enabling rapid estimation of the depth (142) of these reflectors. A B-scan plot (20) which enables fine profilming of reflectors may be a single pane taken at a single axial location determined by an index cursor (168), or may alternatively be a composite plot. Various modifications to the basic system are disclosed that further enhance the utility of the display (10).

For determination of surface and special surface characteristics of an object, e.g. a fingerprint, the finger tip is placed on a convex surface of a support which is irradiated through a liquid or solid medium with spherical ultrasonic waves from a point source provided as a hole in a carrier for a ring of receiving transducers.

The present invention discloses a system and a method for ultrasonically detecting ply wrinkling in a laminated composite. The composite is ultrasonically scanned with sound wave energy generated from transducer(s) operating in an oblique incidence pulse echo mode. Echo signals reflected from the plies of the composite are then detected with the transducer(s). Each set of reflected echo signals represents a three-dimensional waveform data set u(x,y,t) having spatial dimensions (x,y) and a temporal dimension (t) mapping directly to a third spatial dimension (z) orthogonal to the surface of the composite. The three dimensional waveform data set u (x,y,t) corresponds to a three-dimensional volumetric region in the composite. The three-dimensional waveform data set u(x,y,t) is then processed into a rectified data set w(x,y,t). Ply noise in the three-dimensional data set w(x,y,t) is then filtered. The filtered three-dimensional data set is then converted into wrinkle severity C-scan and a wrinkle depth C-scan. Subsurface wrinkling in the composite is then detected and measured from the wrinkle severity C-scan and the wrinkle depth C-scan.

A pulse-echo, immersion method for ultrasonic evaluation of a material which accounts for and eliminates nonlevelness in the equipment set-up and sample thickness variation effects employs a single transducer and automatic scanning and digital imaging to obtain an image of a property of the material, such as pore fraction. The nonlevelness and thickness variation effects are accounted for by pre-scan adjustments of the time window to insure that the echoes received at each scan point are gated in the center of the window. This information is input into the scan file so that, during the automatic scanning for the material evaluation, each received echo is centered in its time window. A cross-correlation function calculates the velocity at each scan point, which is then proportionalized to a color or grey scale and displayed on a video screen.

A wafer mapping method and apparatus for automatically determining the location and orientation of workpieces within a workpiece processing tool. An illumination device is provided which directs light toward the edges of the workpieces and a vision system is utilized to receive and process the images obtained from the light which is reflected off the edges of the workpieces.