Monitoring Method for Pipe Thinning using Accelerometers

가속도계를 이용한 배관 감육 감시 방법

Pipe thinning is one of the major issues for the structural fracture of pipes of nuclear power plants. Therefore a method to inspect a large area of piping systems quickly and accurately is needed. In this paper, we proposed the method for monitoring pipe thinning. Our basic idea come from that a group velocity of impact wave is different as wall thickness. If the group velocity is measured, wall thickness can be estimated. To obtain the group velocity, time-frequency analysis is used. This is because an arrival time difference can be measured easily in time-frequency domain rather than time domain. To test the performance of this technique, experiments have been performed for a plate and U type pipe. Results show that the proposed technique is quite powerful in the monitoring pipe thinning.