Patent ID: 6938488

Claim:
A portably operable ultrasound inspection apparatus particularly adapted to inspect a container which has a containing chamber to contain a quantity of material therein, and which has a front wall and a back wall defining at least in part said containing chamber, said inspection apparatus comprising: a) a housing section; b) a sensing section which is mounted to said housing section and which is arranged to transmit transmitted ultrasound pulse(s) and receive reflected ultrasound pulse(s) and to provide an analog signal(s) representative of a reflected waveform(s) of the reflected ultrasonic pulse(s); c) said sensing section comprising a transducer assembly with a transducer placement location, and at least a first higher frequency transducer and a second lower frequency transducer which are arranged to be better able to transmit pulse(s) in a higher frequency range and in a lower frequency range, respectively, said sensing section being arranged so that either of said transducers can be mounted in said placement location to transmit ultrasound pulses; d) a circuit section arranged to generate electric pulse(s) for said sensing section, receive the analog signal(s) from said sensing section, and to convert said analog signal(s) to digital signal(s) representative of the reflected waveform(s) of the reflected ultrasonic pulse(s); e) a temperature sensor to ascertain temperature of the quantity of material in the chamber of the container and provide a temperature output; f) a computer arranged to receive said digital signal(s) and said temperature output, and to correlate these with travel distance and time of travel of the transmitted pulse(s) and reflected pulse(s) so that with the transmitted pulse(s) and reflected pulse(s) traveling in the chamber of the container, information of velocity of the pulse(s) can be developed and related to identification and/or location of material and/or object(s) in the container.