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In the metallurgical industry, ultrasonic inspection is routinely used for the detection of defects. For the nondestructive inspection of small high strength steel parts, the material can be considered isotropic. However, when the size of the parts under inspection is large, the isotropic material hypothesis does not necessarily hold. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the variation in mechanical properties such as grain size, Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, chemical composition on longitudinal and transversal ultrasonic wave velocities. A 2 cm thick slice cut from a 40-ton bainitic steel ingot that was forged and heat treated was divided into 875 parallelepiped samples of 2x4x7 cm 3 . A metallurgical study has been performed to identify the phase and measure the grain size. Ultrasonic velocity measurements at 2.25 MHz for longitudinal and transversal waves were performed. The original location of the parallelepiped samples in the large forged ingot and the measured velocities were used to produce an ultrasonic velocity map. Using a local isotropy assumption as well as the local density of the parallelepiped samples calculated from the chemical composition of the ingot provided by a previously published study [1], Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio were calculated from the longitudinal and transversal wave velocities. Microtensile measurements were used to validate Young's modulus obtained by the ultrasonic wave velocity and an excellent match was observed. References

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High strength forged steel requires uncompromising quality to warrant advance performance for numerous critical applications. Ultrasonic inspection is commonly used in nondestructive testing to detect cracks and other defects. In steel blocks of relatively small dimensions (at least two directions not exceeding a few centimetres), phased array inspection is a trusted method to generate images of the inside of the blocks and therefore identify and size defects. However, casting of large size forged ingots introduces changes of mechanical parameters such as grain size, the Young's modulus, the Poisson's ratio, and the chemical composition. These heterogeneities affect the wave propagation, and consequently, the reliability of ultrasonic inspection and the imaging capabilities for these blocks. In this context, a custom phased array transducer designed for a 40-ton bainitic forged ingot was investigated. Following a previous study that provided local mechanical parameters for a similar block, two-dimensional simulations were made to compute the optimal transducer parameters including the pitch, width and number of elements. It appeared that depending on the number of elements, backwall reconstruction can generate high amplitude artefacts. Indeed, the large dimensions of the simulated block introduce numerous constructive interferences from backwall reflections which may lead to important artefacts. To increase image quality, the reconstruction algorithm was adapted and promising results were observed and compared with the scattering cone filter method available in the CIVA software.