• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.64-69
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• 2008

In order to detect the internal defects which occur in welding parts of pressure vessel and structures, radiographic testing and ultrasonic testing is applied. However, because of the risks of radiation exposure and film processing, radiographic testing takes a relatively long time to verify the test results and it has affected in the production process. Typically, the manual ultrasonic testing is not easy to reproduce the result and it is highly dependent on the tester's skills. The TOFD technique, one of the automatic ultrasonic testings is spreading alternatively. This research describes the comparing test results by applying radiographic testing and TOFD technique to a mock-up specimen incruding the flaws. The TOFD technique will contribute to improve the objective reliability of the ultrasonic technique.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.44-53
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• 1988

The mechanical strengths of buried lamellar tears located near the weld toe in the welded tee joints were evaluated in terms of the loss of load carrying capacity as a function of tear area. In static loading, the load carrying capacity was significantly reduced when tear intercepted over 10% of the cross-sectional area of the welded joints. However, the welded joints containing buried tears still failed at stresses over the yield strength of the base metal in the through-thickness direction in spite of the presence of tears up to 20-25% of the area. Fatigue strength of welded joints containing tears markedly reduced with increasing tear areas. Lehigh lamellar tearing test used in this study to produce speicmens was described in detail. The load carrying cpapacity in static loading was influenced by the reduction of supporting area whereas that in fatigue loading was influenced by the stress-concentration effects of lamellar tears and the reduction of supporting area. In bend tests, the pre-existing lamellar tears always grew up toward the weld toe. However, in fatigue loading, cracks grew up and down simultaneously form both the weld toe and the top of lamellar tears because of stress concentration. In fatigue loading, delaminations and decohesion of inclusion/matrix interface generated in multipass welds provided crack propagation paths and enhanced crack propagation because the tips of delaminations and deconhesios acted as stress raisers.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2010

Ultrasonic inspection of heavy walled cast austenitic stainless steel(CASS)welds is very difficult due to complex and coarse grained structure of CASS material. The large size of anisotropic grain strongly affects the propagation of ultrasound by severe attenuation, change in velocity, and scattering of ultrasonic energy. therefore, the signal patterns originated from flaws can be difficult to distinguish from scattered signals. To improve detection and sizing capability of ID connected defect for heavy walled CASS piping welds, the low frequency segmented TRL Pulse Echo and Phased Array probe has been developed. The experimental studies have been performed using CASS pipe mock-up block containing artificial reflectors(ID connected EDM notch). The automatic pulse echo and phase array technique is applied the detection and the length sizing of the ID connected artificial reflectors and the results for detection and sizing has been compared respectively. The goal of this study is to assess a newly developed ultrasonic probe to improve the detection ability and the sizing of the crack in coarse-grained CASS components.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.240-249
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• 2018

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to find which technique, between the PAUT (Phased array ultrasonic test) that has been used widely in practice and RT (Radiographic test) that was used widely in the past, has the higher reliability as a non-destructive testing of welding points in water wall tubes. Methods: To evaluated the reliability of non-destructive testing, eleven test pieces that were fabricated intentionally, which have the most frequently occurred defect types in water wall tubes and then both the PAUT and RT were performed on those eleven test pieces to compare their reliability. Results: The differences of type of defect, length are occurred due to the characteristics of nondestructive testing. The RT could not detect the lack of fusion defect type in specimen #4 and #8 while PAUT could not detect the lateral crack and 1 mm size small porosity in specimen #11. Conclusion: It is concluded that applying both the RT and PAUT result the best reliability rather than applying only one test method, if it is possible, in nondestructive testing of weld water wall tube in thermal power plant boiler case.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.20-24
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• 2015

During refueling Outage, In-service inspections(ISIs) for the Nuclear Power Plant components are mandatory requirement in accordance with ASME Code Sec. XI. Especially, in current ultrasonic testing is one of the most important NDT techniques that are used for volumetric examination methods for nuclear power plant components, and accurate sizing of flaw indication by UT is essential to assure the integrity of the components. However, ASME code specifies minimum requirement for vessel examination procedure, and so far many different flaw sizing approaches have been tried to apply. Through the Round Robin Test(RRT), the accuracy of ultrasonic flaw sizing using DAC techniques was measured with the mock-ups simulating typical pressure vessel welds. These mock-ups contain artificially introduced flaws of known size and location. This paper shows experimental comparison data on the accuracy of techniques using such as 6dB drop, 50%DAC, 20%DAC and 20%DAC with beam spread correction, and also shows that diverse DAC techniques can be effectively applied to the assessment of the flaw sizing for pressure vessel welds in the stage of welding and fabrication.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.398-403
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• 2011

When a crack exists under a residual stress, for example in welds, the crack can be closed and it shows non symmetric behavior for tension and compression. Ultrasonic detection method for those nonlinear cracks has been developed recently. The method uses the higher order harmonics generating at the crack surface. In this study, parameter study was carried out for the analysis of the harmonics generation at a nonlinear contact interface as a preliminary study for general 3-dimensional cracks. One-dimensional problem with simple bilinear behavior for the contacting surface was considered. The amplitude of second harmonic to the fundamental wave was obtained for various stiffness ratios, incident frequencies, and the contacting layer thicknesses.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.37-42
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• 2010

The stay cylinder weld at the steam generator of Korean Standard Nuclear Power Plants is safety class I component and is subjected to be inspected by the volumetric examination such as ultrasonic method. As accessibility of this area is limited due to the narrow space and high radiation, the existing manual inspection method involves various difficulties. Moreover operators may be exposed to internal contamination by contaminated dust during the surface buffing process to improve the inspection reliability of this area. Recently the new automatic inspection system for stay cylinder welds has been developed. The inspection system basically consists of a driving assembly, data acquisition device and signal processing units. The driving assembly is classified by 1) the scanner for inspecting and buffing the weld, 2) pillars for guiding the scanner and 3) the base frame for loading and supporting pillars. The scanner has 4 sensor modules to inspect in 4 refracted angles and 4 incident directions. These components can be inserted into the skirt of the stay cylinder through the manway hole and assembled easily by one-touch in the skirt. Data acquisition device and signal processing units developed in previous works are also newly upgraded for better processing of data analysis and evaluation. The system has been successfully demonstrated not only in the mock-up but also in the field. In this paper, newly developed inspection system for the stay cylinder weld of the steam generator is introduced and their field applications are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.147-153
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• 2013

Recently the primary water stress corrosion cracking(PWSCC) has occurred in the dissimilar metal weld region between pressurizer nozzle and safe-end in nuclear power plants(NPPs). As material of the pressurizer nozzle, SA508 Gr. 3 low alloy steel was used. F316L stainless steel and Alloy 82/182 were used as safe-end and weld metal, respectively. Although mechanical properties are needed for evaluation of the structural integrity against flaw in the material, material specification and standard don't supply those properties. Therefore, the present study conducted tensile and fracture toughness tests on SA508 Gr.3 and F316L stainless steel at ambient temperature and operating temperature of NPPs and reported the tested results.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.40-45
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• 2008

There exist many types of pipe and component fatigue through vibrations, thermal fatigues or shifting. In some cases of thermal stratification/thermal fatigue, pipes & components are receiving thermal stress by means of material expansion and shrinkage by continuous thermal repetitive variation. Small cracks initially occur on the inside surface by thermal stress. These cracks grow in depth the pipe wall and finally come to a rupture. Pipe parts of susceptibility to thermal stratification and thermal fatigue are now being examined by conventional UT(ultrasonic test) as volumetric examination. It is difficult to fully satisfy the code & standards requirements because 3" weldolet weldments of RCS 16" pipe to 3" branch connection lines have complex structural shape. To solve the problems of conventional UT examination, we made a realistic mock-up and UT calibration block. We performed a simulation of phased array UT utilizing CIVA as NDE(Non-Destructive Examination) simulation software. Also we designed phased array UT transducer and wedge, optimal frequency by using simulation data. We performed phased array UT experiment through mock-up including artificial flaws(notch). The phased array UT technique is finally developed to improve the reliability of ultrasonic test at RCS 16" pipe to 3" branch connection weld.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.20-27
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• 2010

In order to prevent the corrosion of component contacted primary water designed alloy 600 material in the nuclear power plant. But the primary water stress corrosion cracking(PWSCC) of alloy 600 and weld area occurs continuously due to the residual stress. The leakage accident resulted from PWSCC in the drain nozzle of the steam generator of domestic power plants. Heater sleeves of the pressurizer are welded with alloy 600 weld material and therefore exposed to the primary water environment. PWSCC occurred in heater sleeve material and weld area of many foreign power plants. The current issue of domestic nuclear power plants are consequently concentrated to PWSCC of similar material. In order to improve the detection and the sizing of the PWSCC in the welding sleeve of the pressurizer, the automatic UT system and multi-directions probe sets have been developed. The experimental studies have been performed using the mock-up block containing artificial reflectors(ID connected EDM notch) and semi-artificial cracks made from thermal fatigue. The automatic UT System is applied in the detection and the length sizing of the ID/OD on the tube and the J-groove weld area of the artificial reflectors and results of the detection and the sizing are compared respectively. Also, the developed automatic UT system is successfully accomplished to inspect the heater sleeve and the J-groove weld area on the pressurizer for the detection of PWSCC.