The study of ultrasonic wave phenomena for nondestructive evaluation (NDE) purposes requires precise numerical models to predict the transient elastic wave propagation and interaction by arbitrarily shaped defects. During the past two years the principal investigator has succeeded in developing a general purpose finite element code to solve the underlying equation of motion for two-dimensional plane-strain situations. The program, which is vectorized for a CYBER 205 system, is capable of accounting for realistic pulsed transducer signals and their interaction with arbitrarily shaped 2-D defects. In order to investigate the feasibility of extending the current 2-D plane-strain computer code to a true 3-D model an initial need for 25 hours of cycle time on a CYBER 205/ETA 10 supercomputer at Princeton University is requested.
