Modelling the emergence of the coherent reflected field for spherical cavities in a solid matrix

In this paper we study the acoustic field backscattered from a plane slab of spherical scatterers. The work is motivated by the need to model the reflected field received from porous regions of composite materials when using ultrasonic NDE techniques. Here, we simulate the field received from the spherical scatterers, using a semi-analytical model for the response of single realizations of scatterer configurations, together with the coherent field for the equivalent homogeneous medium. The degree of incoherence of the simulated field response from the scatterers is calculated and its dependence on scatterer radius, concentration and frequency are determined.