Sequentially fired high dynamic range NDT/NDI inspection device
AssigneeOlympus NDT
InventorAndrew Thomas
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An apparatus for performing ultrasonic inspection of an object, during one measurement on the object, triggers a sequence of excitations of the probe system and receives a sequence of substantially identical echo signals reflected from the object, and further scales each echo signal to different degrees to increase and extend the dynamic range of the echo signals. An A/D converter is then used to digitize the scaled signal sequentially in a manner which dispenses the need for using numerous A/D converters and the associated filters. The digitized signal samples are then combined to produce a single digital output in a manner that is not over-flowed and with desirable resolution.
Claims20
An inspection device configured for inspecting a test object, comprising:
- a probe system;
- a digital logic device, configured to trigger the probe system, during a measurement at a given location on the test object, to cause a sequence of excitations of the probe system to produce a corresponding sequence of consecutive waves upon the location of the test object during the measurement, wherein the probe system, is further configured to receive a sequence of corresponding wave responses and to produce a sequence of corresponding electric signals;
- a receiver having a plurality of signal processing channels, each channel configured to scale the electric signals to a different degree and to produce a sequence of corresponding scaled signals;
- a channel selection device configured to select the scaled signals from the processing channels during successive acquisition cycles corresponding to the sequence of excitations;
- at least one analog to digital converter configured to digitize the selected scaled signals and to produce therefrom a sequence of digitized signal samples corresponding to the sequence of the excitations;
- a digital memory for storing the digitized signal samples;
- and
- wherein the digital logic device is configured to process the digitized signal samples to produce a composite signal output with a dynamic range that is higher than that of said analog to digital converter.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.