The Kirchhoff approximation is widely used to describe the scatter of elastodynamic waves. It simulates the scattered field as the convolution of the free-space Green’s tensor with the geometrical elastodynamics approximation to the total field on the scatterer surface and, therefore, cannot be used to describe nongeometrical phenomena, such as head waves. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that an alternative approximation, the convolution of the far-field asymptotics of the Lamb’s Green’s tensor with incident surface tractions, has no such limitation. This is done by simulating the scatter of a critical Gaussian beam of transverse motions from an infinite plane. The results are of interest in ultrasonic nondestructive testing.

In this paper we extend recent work on the detection of inclusions using electrostatic measurements to the problem of crack detection in a two-dimensional object. As in the inclusion case our method is based on a factorization of the difference between two Neumann-Dirichlet operators. The factorization possible in the case of cracks is much simpler than that for inclusions and the analysis is greatly simplified. However, the directional information carried by the crack makes the practical implementation of our algorithm more computationally demanding.