• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.339-345
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• 2008

The heat exchanger tube in nuclear power plants is mainly fabricated from nonferromagnetic material such as a copper, titanium, and inconel alloy, but the moisture separator & reheater tube in the turbine system is fabricated from ferromagnetic material such as a carbon steel or ferrite stainless steel which has a good mechanical properties in harsh environments of high pressure and temperature. Especially, the moisture separator & reheater tubes, which use steam as a heat transfer media, typically employ a tubing with integral fins to furnish higher heat transfer rates. The ferromagnetic tube typically shows superior properties in high pressure and temperature environments than a nonferromagnetic material, but can make a trouble during the normal operation of power plants because the ferrous tube has service-induced damage forms including a steam cutting, erosion, mechanical wear, stress corrosion cracking, etc. Therefore, nondestructive examination is periodically performed to evaluate the tube integrity. Now, the remote field testing(RFT) technique is one of the solution for examination of ferromagnetic tube because the conventional eddy current technique typically can not be applied to ferromagnetic tube such as a ferrite stainless steel due to the high electrical permeability of ferrous tube. In this study, we have designed RFT probes, calibration standards, artificial flaw specimen, and probe pusher-puller necessary for field application, and have successfully carry out RFT examination of the moisture separator & reheater tube of nuclear power plants.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.552-559
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• 2011

Recently, the eddy current testing(ECT), alternating current field testing, magnetic flux leakage testing and remote field testing have been used as a nondestructive evaluation method based on the electromagnetic induction phenomenon. The eddy current testing is now widely accepted as a NDE method for the heat exchanger tube in the electric power industry, chemical, shipbuilding, and military. The ECT system mainly consists of the synthesizer module, analog module, analog-to-digital converter, power supplier, and data acquisition and analysis program. In the previous study, the synthesizer module and the analog module which is essential to the ECT system were primarily developed, and in this study the data acquisition and analysis program were developed. The operation system for this program is based on the Windows 7, and optimized for the Korean users, and the specific feature of this program using setup wizard enables inspector to make a setup easily for acquisition and analysis of ECT data. In this paper, the configuration and functions of eddy current data acquisition and analysis program will be introduced.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.155-161
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• 2010

Recently, the electromagnetic techniques of the eddy current testing(ECT), alternating current field testing, magnetic flux leakage testing and remote field testing have been used as a nondestructive evaluation method based on the electromagnetic induction. The eddy current testing is now widely accepted as a NDE method for the heat exchanger tube in the electric power industry, chemical, shipbuilding, and military. The ECT system mainly consists of the synthesizer module, analog module, analog-to-digital converter, power supplier, and data acquisition and analysis program. In this study, the synthesizer module and the analog module which are essential to the ECT system were primarily developed. The developed ECT system is basically a multifrequency type which is able to inject the maximum four frequencies based on the frequency and time domain multiplexing method. Conclusively, we confirmed that the EC signal was processed appropriately in each circuit modules, and the Lissajous EC signal was displayed in the impedance plane.