Gradual pipe wall thinning diagnosis through the variation of dispersion characteristics of SH waves

SH파 분산특성 변화를 이용한 배관 점진감육 진단 기법

Pipe wall thinning is one of severe problems on structural safety in nuclear power plants. A guided wave can be a proper tool for the fast evaluation or monitoring. As for gradual wall thinnings, however, low sensitivity caused by the low reflection coefficient limits the use of the guided wave. In this work, instead of the guided wave reflection at the wall thinning, the variation of dispersion characteristics is concerned. SH waves were employed due to several advantages and the magnetostrictive patch transducers were used for the excitation and sensing of the SH waves. The proposed method were verified with some experiments and showed the feasibility as an effective tool for the inspection of gradual wall thinning.