• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.349-355
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• 2014

Wall thinning defects can occur in the pressure vessels used in a variety of industries. Such defects are related to the flow velocity. Considering the fact that such vessels constitute up to 70 or 80% of the plant structures in a power plant, it is important to measure internal defects as part of a safety evaluation. In this study, optical measurement were applied in a non-destructive evaluation using shearography to ensure the safety and improve the reliability of a power plant through the non-contact, non-destructive evaluation of pressure vessels. In order to verify whether the pressure vessels contained faults, experimental and analytical investigation were conducted to measure any internal defects and out-of-plane deformation from inner temperature changes and pressure changes in the piping of the circulation system. The most important factors in this research were the thickness, width, and length of a defect. An increase in these could confirm an increase in the deformation. Thus, internal defects in a pressure vessel were measured using shearography, which made it possible to ensure the reliability and integrity of the pipe.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.899-909
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• 2021

In Musculoskeletal ultrasound examination, a linear transducer (12-5 MHz) with a contact surface length of 6 cm, which is commonly distributed in medical institutions, does not contact with bent fingers and wrist depressions only by using a conventional liquid ultrasound gel, which causes image loss. In order to solve this image loss, the use of commercially available Water gel pad is increasing. However, it is a disposable medical product. Repeated use is prohibited and expensive. In this study, in order to reduce the economic burden caused by the use of the commercialized Water gel Pad, we searched for water-soluble food thickener powder that can be easily purchased around our lives and manufactured Gel pads. Among them, kappa-Carrageenan Gel Pad, iota-Carrageenan Gel Pad, and Agar-Agar Gel Pad satisfied the evaluation criteria without artifacts in image evaluation using the N-365 Multipurpose Phantom. Also, the price to purchase the food thickener powder was about 38 times cheaper than the existing commercialized Water gel pad. As a result, if you use the food thickener powder such as kappa-Carrageenan, iota-Carrageenan and Agar-Agar to make solidified elastic Gel pad without a cover instead of the commercially available expensive disposable Water gel pad, the convenience and usefulness of use are improved. It is judged that the manufactured Gel pads can contribute well to the role of efficient ultrasound propagation medium.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.410-418
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• 2023

Recently, advancements and commercialization in the field of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS) has rapidly progressed. Concurrently, studies are also underway to develop methods for automatically surveying the condition of various on-board equipment remotely to ensure the navigational safety of MASS. One key issue that has gained prominence is the method to obtain values from analog gauges installed in various equipment through image processing. This approach has the advantage of enabling the non-contact detection of gauge values without modifying or changing already installed or planned equipment, eliminating the need for type approval changes from shipping classifications. The objective of this study was to identify a dynamically changing indicator needle within noisy images of analog gauges. The needle object must be identified because its position significantly affects the accurate reading of gauge values. An analog pressure gauge attached to an emergency fire pump model was used for image capture to identify the needle object. The acquired images were pre-processed through Gaussian filtering, thresholding, and morphological operations. The needle object was then identified through Hough Transform. The experimental results confirmed that the center and object of the indicator needle could be identified in images of noisy analog gauges. The findings suggest that the image processing method applied in this study can be utilized for shape identification in analog gauges installed on ships. This study is expected to be applicable as an image processing method for the automatic remote survey of MASS.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.275-283
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• 2002

To detect the position and depth of buried underground utilities, method of Ground Penetrating Radar(GPR) survey is the most commonly used. However, the skin-depth of GPR is very shallow, and in the places where subsurface materials are not homogeneous and are compose of clays and/or salts and gravels, GPR method has limitations in application and interpretation. The aim of this study is to overcome these limitations of GPR survey. For this purpose the site where the GPR survey is unsuccessful to detect the underground big pipes is selected, and soil tests were conducted to confirm the reason why GPR method was not applicable. Non-destructive high-frequency electromagnetic (HFEM) survey was newly developed and was applied in the study area to prove the effectiveness of this new technique. The frequency ranges $2kHz{\sim}4MHz$ and the skin depth is about 30m. The HFEM measures the electric field and magnetic field perpendicular to each other to get the impedance from which vertical electric resistivity distribution at the measured point can be deduced. By adopting the capacitive coupled electrodes, it can make the measuring time shorter, and can be applied to the places covered by asphalt an and/or concrete. In addition to the above mentioned advantages, noise due to high-voltage power line is much reduced by stacking the signals. As a result, the HFEM was successful in detecting the buried underground objects. Therefore this method is a promising new technique that can be applied in the lots of fields, such as geotechnical and archaeological surveys.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.37-42
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• 2005

The non-destructive Inspection of the fillet weldment has difficulties due to its geometrical complexity and uneasy access. The surface shear horizontal wave (SH-wave), however, has been successfully applied to the detection of cracks on the surface and sub-surface of the filet weldment heel part. The conventional ultrasonic inspection using the surface SH-wave is usually a contact method using piezoelectric transducer. Thus, it is not suitable for a field application because the reliability and repeatability of inspection are significantly affected by test conditions such as couplant, contact pressure and pre-process. In order to overcome this problem, a non-contact SH-wave inspection method using EMAT is propose. The experimental results with this non-contact method are compared with those with a conventional ultrasonic method in fillet weldment with slit type defects. It is shown that the non-contact inspection technique requires simple procedure and less time in the fillet weldment inspection.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.46-52
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• 2019

This work proposes a noncontact ultrasonic transducer for detecting wall-thinning of containment liner plates of nuclear power plants by measuring their thickness without physical contact. Because the containment liner plate is designed to prevent atmospheric leakage of radioactive substances under severe nuclear accident, its wall-thinning inspection is important for safety of nuclear power plants. Wall-thinning investigation of containment liner plates have been carried out by measuring their thickness with contact-type ultrasonic thickness gauge by inspectors and needs a lot of time and cost. As an alternative, an electromagnetic acoustic transducer measuring precisely thickness of containment liner plates without any physical contact or couplant was suggested in this research. A transducer generating and measuring shear ultrasonic waves in thickness direction was designed and wave field produced by the transducer was analyzed to verify the design. The working performance of the suggested transducer was tested with carbon steel plate specimens with various thicknesses. The test result shows that the proposed transducer can measure thickness of the specimens precisely without any couplant and implies that swift scanning of wall-thinning of containment liner plates will be possible with the proposed transducer.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.117-127
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• 2007

The exposed aggregate PCC(EAP) pavements have been successfully used in Europe and Japan as low-noise pavements. Coarse aggregate are exposed on the pavement surface texture of EAP by removing mortar of surface. The pavement surface texture should maintain not only low-noise characteristic but also adequate skid resistance level during the performance period. Skid resistance decreased with wearing and polishing of tire and pavement surface due to the repetition of tire-pavement contact. Since the tires mainly contact the exposed coarse aggregate, the shape and rock type of coarse aggregate significantly influence wearing and polishing of EAP pavements. The test for resistance to abrasion coarse aggregate by use of the Los Angeles machine(KS F 2508) and the method of test for resistance to abrasion coarse aggregate by use of the Accelerated Polishing Machine(ASTM D 3319-90) are generally used to evaluate polishing characteristics of aggregate. In this study, polishing of coarse aggregate of different five rock types were evaluated by KS F 2508(LA abrasion test) and ASTM D 3319-90(PSV method). The results of LA abrasion test and PSV method were contrary to each other. Since LA abrasion test is estimated the quantity of abrasion by the impact of aggregate, it may not be adequate to evaluate the polishing of aggregate by the repetition of tire. In the case of PSV method, the resistance of polishing is estimated the skid resistance variation of polished aggregate after repetition of tire. The PSV method is adequate for the evaluation on polishing of coarse aggregate. From the test results of PSV method, it was founded that rock type, specific gravity, coarse aggregate angularity, flat or elongated particles in coarse aggregate are significant to the resistance characteristic of coarse aggregate.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.165-170
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• 2014

Shear horizontal (SH) waves propagate as a type of plate wave in a thin sheet. The dispersion characteristics of SH waves can be used for signal analysis. Therefore, SH-waves are useful for monitoring the structural health of a thin-sheet-structure. An electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT), which is a non-contact ultrasonic transducer, can generate SH-waves easily by varying the shape and array of magnets and coils. Therefore, an EMAT can be applied to an automated ultrasonic testing system for structural health monitoring. When used as a sensor, however, the EMAT has a weakness in that electromagnetic interference (EMI) noise can occur easily in the automated system because of motors and electric devices. Alternatively, a fiber optic sensor works well in the same environment with EMI noise because it uses a light signal instead of an electric signal. In this paper, a fiber Fabry-P$\acute{e}$rot interferometer (FFPI) was proposed as a sensor to receive the SH-waves generated by an EMAT. A simple test was performed to verify the performance of the FFPI sensor. It is thus shown that the FFPI can receive SH-wave signals clearly.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.508-517
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• 2004

We described a near-field scanning microwave microscope which uses a high-quality dielectric resonator with a tunable screw. The operating frequency is f=4.5 5GHz. The probe tip is mounted in a cylindrical resonant cavity coupled to a dielectric resonator We developed a hybrid tip combining a reduced length of the tapered part with a small apex. In order to understand the function of the probe, we fabricated three different tips using a conventional chemical etching technique and observed three different NSMM images for patterened Cr films on glass substrates. We measured the reflection coefficient of different metal thin film samples with the same thickness of 300m and compared with theoretical impedance respectly. By tuning the tunable screw coming through the top cover, we could improve sensitivity, signal-to-noise ratio, and spatial resolution to better than $1{\mu}m$. To demonstrate the ability of local microwave characterization, the surface resistance of metallic thin films has been mapped.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.23-30
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• 2007

We observed the NaCl concentration of solutions using a near-field microwave microprobe(NFMM). Instead of the usual technique, we take advantage of the noncontact evaluation capabilities of a NFMM. A NFMM with a high Q dielectric resonator allows observation of small variations of the permittivity due to changes in the NaCl concentration. The changes of NaCl concentration due to a change of permittivity of the NaCl solution were investigated by measuring the microwave reflection coefficient $S_{11}$ of the resonator. The NaCl sensor consisted of a dielectric resonator coupled to a probe tip at an operating frequency of about f=4 GHz. The change of the NaCl concentration is directly related to the change of the reflection coefficient due to a near field electromagnetic interaction between the probe tip and the NaCl solution. In order to determine the probe selectivity, we measured a mixture solution of NaCl and glucose.