Experimental validation of a method for the prediction of the acoustic field produced by an acoustic source and the reflected field produced by a solid interface

In this work we present a model to calculate the acoustic pressure generated by the interaction of forward and reflected waves in the vicinity of a solid interface and compare it to experimental data. An experimental setup was designed to measure the forward and the combined forward-reflected acoustic fields produced by a solid interface. A 0.785mm-needle hydrophone was used to characterize the acoustic field produced by a 7.29MHz-ultrasound transducer focused at 6cm. The hydrophone was positioned perpendicularly to the sound propagation direction and moved between the transducer and a 9mm-thick acrylic sample using a robotic arm. Simulations were carried out using a modified Rayleigh-Sommerfeld integral that calculates the particle displacement over a reflecting surface. This particle displacement at the boundary of the interface is then used as an acoustic source to obtain the reflected particle displacement. The complex sum of the forward and reflected fields was compared to the experimental measurements. The measurements showed an interference pattern that increased the pressure amplitude in average 10.4% with peaks of up to 25.8%. The proposed model is able to represent the interference pattern produced by the reflected wave with an average absolute error of 3.4+/-0.54% and a maximal error of 5.6%. The comparison between the experimental measurements and the simulations indicates that the presented model predicts with good accuracy the acoustic field generated by ultrasound transducers facing a solid interface. This model can be used to foresee the outcome of therapeutic applications where the devices are used in proximity to a bone interface.