Detecting sound hard cracks in isotropic inhomogeneities

We consider the problem of detecting the presence of sound-hard cracks in a non homogeneous reference medium from the measurement of multi-static far field data. First, we provide a factorization of the far field operator in order to implement the Generalized Linear Sampling Method (GLSM). The justification of the analysis is also based on the study of a special interior transmission problem. This technique allows us to recover the support of the inhomogeneity of the medium but fails to locate cracks. In a second step, we consider a medium with a multiply connected inhomogeneity assuming that we know the far field data at one given frequency both before and after the appearance of cracks. Using the Differential Linear Sampling Method (DLSM), we explain how to identify the component(s) of the inhomogeneity where cracks have emerged. The theoretical justification of the procedure relies on the comparison of the solutions of the corresponding interior transmission problems without and with cracks. Finally we illustrate the GLSM and the DLSM providing numerical results in 2D. In particular, we show that our method is reliable for different scenarios simulating the appearance of cracks between two measurements campaigns.