DISPERSE: A GENERAL PURPOSE PROGRAM FOR CREATING DISPERSION CURVES

The application of guided waves in NDT can be hampered by the lack of readily available dispersion curves for complex structures. To overcome this hindrance, we have developed a general purpose program that can create dispersion curves for a very wide range of systems and then effectively communicate the information contained within those curves. The program uses the global matrix method to handle multi-layered Cartesian and cylindrical systems. The solution routines cover both leaky and non-leaky cases and remain robust for systems which are known to be difficult, such as large frequency-thicknesses and thin layers embedded in much thicker layers. Elastic and visco-elastic isotropic materials are fully supported; anisotropic materials are also covered, but are currently limited to the elastic, non-leaky, Cartesian case.