STRP

F3DT is a new technology for non-invasive imaging of the interior of an object. It is like the CT scan for imaging the interior of the human body, but instead of using radiative X-rays, it uses non-invasive mechanical waves (i.e., elastic waves in solids, sound waves in liquids). F3DT has a wide range of applications, including geophysical exploration for natural resources, seismic hazard assessment for earthquake insurance pricing, foundation engineering and tunnel construction in civil engineering, non-destructive testing (NDT) for evaluating potential defects in materials, components and structures in mechanical engineering, medical diagnosis of breast cancer and other conditions involving soft tissues, and sonar imaging for underwater object detection and characterization. In the past, various techniques have been explored to improve the resolution of mechanical-wave-based tomography. The F3DT technique developed by the PI at University of Wyoming takes a data-intensive approach that seeks full utilization of all waveform data provided by modern wave-recording sensors (i.e., full-waveform inversion). If this proposal is funded, F3DT will become the first multi-disciplinary commercial 3D full-waveform inversion software in the tomography software market. The computational cost for F3DT is substantially higher than its alternatives. Unlike alternative techniques that can be carried out on a desktop computer, F3DT usually needs a computer cluster. With the advent of cloud computing and the continuing decline of cloud computing costs, we can foresee the wide adoption of F3DT implemented on virtual computer clusters built on the cloud infrastructure.