Pipe fouling is a challenging problem in many industrial applications. Current cleaning techniques require halting the production during the cleaning phase and the existing methods are unable to do targeted cleaning, even though fouling is often localized to certain areas inside the pipeline. To address this issue, we use FEM-simulated, time-reversed signals to focus ultrasound power onto a pre-determined location: a fouled pipe residing inside a Plexiglas container. Ultrasound cleaning with similar acoustic power was compared to the time-reversal enhanced method in terms of cleaning efficiency. The cleaning efficiency was determined by measuring how much fouling, by mass, both protocols removed from the surface of a Plexiglas pipe, using similar input electric power and equal cleaning time. Our results indicate that the proposed time-reversal-based technique removes three times more fouling than the standard ultrasound cleaning without focusing. The study extends our previous paper on FEM-based time-reversal focusing [1].

管道结垢是许多工业应用中的一个具有挑战性的问题。目前的清洁技术需要在清洁阶段停止生产，并且现有方法无法进行有针对性的清洁，即使污垢通常集中在管道内的某些区域。为了解决这个问题，我们使用有限元模拟的时间反转信号将超声波功率聚焦到预定位置：有机玻璃容器内的结垢管道。将具有相似声功率的超声波清洗与时间反转增强方法的清洗效率进行了比较。清洁效率是通过测量两种方案使用相似的输入电力和相同的清洁时间从有机玻璃管道表面去除的污垢量（按质量计算）来确定的。我们的结果表明，所提出的基于时间反转的技术去除的污垢是标准超声波清洁（无需聚焦）的三倍。这项研究扩展了我们之前关于基于有限元的时间反转聚焦的论文 [1]。