• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.10 no.2 s.31
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• pp.61-67
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• 2006

We developed the ultrasonic phased array technique for obtaining ultrasonic images of electrofusion joints of polyethylene piping. And we inspected 4 cases at fields with this technique. First case is for the 300 mm diameter polyethylene electrofusion joint by using 3.5 MHz phased array sensor, second is for the 350 mm diameter saddle electrofusion joint, third is for the 400 mm diameter electrofusion joints and the last one is for the 400 mm diameter piping joints which will be used at 300 kPa suppling pressure.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.585-594
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• 2022

The detector for digital radiography testing, which is currently mainly used, consists of a detector with a flat structure, making it impossible to fully adhere to the digital radiography testing of the test object with curvature. In this study, a curved panel detector capable of adhering to curvature was fabricated to improve the quality of the digital image during the digital radiography testing of piping welds at industrial sites, and digital radiography images using flat and curved panel detectors were obtained for 6in pipes with different nominal thickness. As a result of the experiment, it was confirmed that the flat panel detector does not fully adhere to the pipe, resulting in a gap between the outer part of the pipe and the detector, resulting in a difference in the unsharpness and diffusion of the digital image. On the other hand, it was confirmed that the curved panel detector minimizes the gap between the pipe outer part and the detector, so that digital image diffusion is less than that of the flat panel detector. The higher the confidence of the image, the lower the quality and error in reading, so it is believed that higher quality images can be obtained than conventional flat panel detectors when using detectors that can be closely attached to the inspection object.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.556-560
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• 2001

Remote field eddy current testing (RFECT) with through-wall transmission characteristic is being applied to pipes ranging from small tubes of heat exchanger to natural gas supply pipelines. Cast iron pipes with nominal diameter of 100mm are used primarily as the waterline pipes. The leakage of water occurs due to defects in the pipes caused by vibration of automobiles and corrosion. But, the use of direct inspection methods such as insertion of inspection equipment inside the pipelines has been limited due to its lack of economical efficiency. Economical development of inspection equipments is possible since RFECT method can be easily employed for system integration and quantitative evaluation of both inside and outside defects. In this study, the development of underground pipeline inspection system was tarried out by using RFECT method in consideration of the characteristics of waterline network. This paper specifically describes the design and production of RFECT pipeline inspection pig using centralizer mechanism, development of remote field eddy current signal acquisition and processing software, and review of RFECT system operation procedures.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.483-489
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• 2016

The typical methods used for inspecting ferromagnetic pipes include the ultrasonic testing (UT) contact method and the following non-contact methods: magnetic flux leakage (MFL), electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMAT), and remote field eddy current testing (RFECT). Among these methods, the RFECT method has the advantage of being able to establish a system smaller than the diameter of a pipe. However, the method has several disadvantages as well, including different sensitivities and difficult-to-repair coil sensors which comprise its array system. Therefore, a giant magneto-resistance (GMR) sensor was applied to address these issues. The GMR sensor is small, easy to replace, and has uniform sensitivity. In this experiment, the GMR sensor was used to measure remote field and defect signal characteristics (in the axial and radial directions) in a ferromagnetic pipe. These characteristics were measured in an effort to investigate standard defects at changing depths within a pipe. The results show that the experiment successfully demonstrated the applicability of the GMR sensor to RFECT signal detection in ferromagnetic pipe.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.18-26
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• 2017

This work proposes an alternative pipe wall-thinning inspection method based on change of eigenfrequencies of shell vibration modes in wall-thinned pipes. It takes much time to detect wall-thinning of pipes using ultrasonic thickness gauge and only a limited number of pipes are under regular inspection. In a pipe with locally decreased thickness, stiffness varies along circumferential direction and natural frequencies of shell vibration modes of the pipe change or frequencies of same modes bifurcate into two different values. Therefore, one can monitor pipe wall-thinning by measuring change of natural frequencies or estimate wall-thinning shape qualitatively. The feasibility of the proposed method was studied by FE vibration analysis for wall-thinned pipes. Modal testing was also carried out for the pipes with artificial wall-thinned section to verify the working performance of the suggested technique.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.58-65
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• 2020

3D Models of offshore plant piping materials designed by 3D CAD systems are provided to the production processes in the form of 2D piping drawings and 2D piping installation drawings. In addition to the standard engineering information, the purchasing, procurement, manufacturing, installation, and inspection of raw materials are managed systematically in an integrated process control system. The existing integrated process management system can help reduce the processing time by managing the flow and progress of resources systematically, but it does not include 3D design model information. Hence, it is difficult to understand complicated pipe structures before installing the pipe. In addition, when design changes or immediate design modifications are required, it is difficult to find related data or exchange information quickly with each other. To solve this problem, an offshore plant-piping process-monitoring system was developed based on a 3D model. The 3D model-based piping monitoring system is based on Visual Studio 2017 C# and UNITY3D so that the piping-process work information can be linked to the 3D CAD model in real time. In addition, the 3D model could check the progress of the pipe installation process, such as block, size, and material, and the progress of functional inspection items, such as cleaning, hydraulic inspection, and pneumatic inspection.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetics Society
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.18-25
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• 2013

MFL PIG (Magnetic Flux Leakage Pipeline Inspection Gauge) is called the system which detects the defect for underground pipelines by using magnetic flux leakage method in nondestructive testing. This method is very suitable for testing pipelines because pipeline has high magnetic permeability. MFL PIG generates the magnetic fields to the pipe axially oriented, and detect the signal of leakage flux by using hall sensor. However, MFL PIG is hard to detect the axially oriented crack with small size because the magnetic flux leakage is not enough to be occurred. To detect the small size and axially oriented crack, the circumferential MFL (CMFL) PIG is being proposed and it can maximize the leakage flux for the axial crack by performing magnetic fields circumferentially on the pipe. In this paper, CMFL PIG is applied to detect the axially oriented crack with small size and the analysis for the distribution and the amplitude of the leakage flux signal is performed by using three dimensional finite element method. From sensing signals, the method how to determine the shape of axially oriented cracks is proposed and verified with experiment.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.12-19
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• 2014

To minimize the risk of corrosion on buried pipeline and to maximize the efficiency of cathodic protection, various indirect inspection techniques have been used for decades. In the United States, 49 CFR has regulated the external corrosion direct assessment for buried pipelines. In Korea, there is no provision for external corrosion direct assessment but there is only, according to the KGS Code, provision that if the survey of the defects of buried pipeline and the leakage test for the pipe were conducted, it is deemed to leakage inspection. We, therefore, have suggested external corrosion direct assessment method appropriate to domestic status through the survey of the regulations and standards of UK and the USA and the investigation of domestic situation on coating damage detection method. The proposed external corrosion direct evaluation method was used as the basis when introducing the precision safety diagnosis regulation for the medium-pressure pipe in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.317-323
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• 2010

The manual ultrasonic examination for the nuclear power plant piping welds has been demonstrated by using KPD(Korean Performance Demonstration) generic procedure. For automated ultrasonic examination, there is no generic procedure and it should be qualified by using applicable automated equipment. Until now, most of qualified procedures used pulse-echo technique and there is no qualified procedure using phased array technique. In this study, data acquisition and analysis software were developed and phased-array transducer and wedge were designed to implement phased array technique for nuclear power plant in-service inspection. The developed procedure are qualified for performance demonstration for the flaw detection, length sizing and depth sizing. The qualified procedure will be applied for the field examination in the nuclear power plant piping weld inspection.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.191-198
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• 2008

Flow accelerated corrosion (FAC) phenomenon of low alloy carbon steels in nuclear power plant has been known as one of major degradation mechanisms. It has a potential to cause nuclear pipe rupture accident which may directly impact on the plant reliability and safety. Recently, the equipotential switching direct current potential drop (ES-DCPD) method has been developed, by the present authors, as a method to monitor wall loss in a piping. This method can rapidly monitor the thinning of piping, utilizing either the wide range monitoring (WiRM) or the narrow range monitoring (NaRM) technique. WiRM is a method to monitor wide range of straight piping, whereas NaRM focuses significantly on a narrow range such as an elbow. WiRM and NaRM can improve the reliability of the current FAC screening method that is based on computer modeling on fluid flow conditions. In this paper, the measurements by ES-DCPD are performed with signal sensitivity analyses in the laboratory environment for extended period and showed the viability of ES-DCPD for real plant applications.