• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.114-121
• /
• 2009

Ultrasonic guided waves have been widely utilized for long range inspection of structures. Especially, development of array guided waves techniques and its application for long range gas pipe lines(length of from hundreds meters to few km) were getting increased. In this study, focusing algorithm for array guided waves was developed in order to improve long range inspectability and accuracy of the array guided waves techniques for long range inspection of gas pipes, and performance of the developed techniques was verified by experiments using the developed array guided wave system. As a result, S/N ratio of array guided wave signals obtained with the focusing algorithm was increased higher than that of signals without focusing algorithm.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.20 no.6
• /
• pp.538-544
• /
• 2000

A phased array ultrasonic nondestructive inspection system is being developed to obtain images of the interior of steel structures by modifying a medical ultrasound imaging system. The medical system consists of 64 individual transceiver channels that can drive 128 array elements. Several modifications of the system were required mainly due to the change of sound speed. It was necessary to fabricate array transducers for steel structure and to obtain A-scan signal that is necessary for the nondestructive testing. Boundary diffraction wave model was used for the prediction of radiation beam field from array transducers, which provided guidelines to design array transducers. And a RF data acquisition board was fabricated for the A-scan signal acquisition along a selected un line within an image. For the proper beam forming in the transmission and reception for steel structure, delay time was controlled. To demonstrate the performance of the developed system and fabricated transducers, images of artificial specimens and A-scan signals for selected scan lines were obtained in a real time fashion.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.19 no.6
• /
• pp.420-425
• /
• 1999

Time of flight diffraction(TOFD) method is used in nondestructive tests of piping and pressure vessels because of its advantages over a pulse echo technique: its speed, objectivity, repeatability and its insensitivity to specimen surface conditions and discontinuity orientation. But it is the one of weak points in TOFD method that it has the dead zone in sub-surface resolution induced by lateral waves. We solved the dead-zone problem near the sub-surface by using the deconvolution method and the developed ultrasonic testing system showed high performance.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.95-108
• /
• 1996

In ultrasonic testing, flaw signal from which quantitative information on flaws is determined is influenced by 3 factors : (1) the incident wavefield.produced by the transducer, (2) the scattered waves produced by flaws, and (3) the reception of the scattered waves back at the transducer. So even small changes in transducer performance due to aging or unexpected damages can produce the changes in the characteristics of flaw signal and finally the changes in the quantitative information on flaws. Thus a reliable calibration method of transducer performance is desired. Recently, theoretical models for ultrasonic testing have been employed as reference standards for the calibration of transducers which are considered as circular planar piston sources in the most of cases. But this simplification cannot be applied to partially damaged transducer which has lost their symmetry in performance, even not in appearance. Unfortunately there has been no reliable practical model which can be used for the calibration of partially damaged transducers. Here a pulse-echo testing model for partially damaged ultrasonic transducers was developed with experimental verification. The experimental responses agree very well with the theoretical prediction. So we expect that this model can be served as a theoretical reference standards for transducer calibration.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.20-26
• /
• 2005

Ultrasonic guided waves have been widely employed for long range inspection of structures such as plates, rods and pipes. There are numerous modes with different wave velocities, and the appropriate mode selection is one of key techniques in the application of guided waves. In the present work, phase tuning by an array transducer was applied to generate ultrasonic guided waves. For this purpose, 8-channel ultrasonic pulser/receiver and their controller which enables sequential activation of each channels with given time delay were developed. Eight transducers were fabricated in order to generate guided waves by using an array transducer. The selective tuning of wave mode can be achieved by changing the interval between elements of an array transducer.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.304-312
• /
• 1998

In order to assure the reliability and integrity of structures such as bridges, Power and petrochemical plants, nondestructive evaluation techniques are recently playing more important roles. Among the various kinds of nondestructive evaluation techniques, ultrasonic technique is one of the most widely used methods for nondestructive inspection of internal defects in structures. For the reliable quantitative evaluation of internal defects from the experimental ultrasonic signals, a numerical analysis of ultrasonic scattering field due to a defect distribution is absolutely required. In this paper, the SH-wave scattering by multi-cavity defects using elastodynamic boundary element method is studied. The effects of shape of defects on transmitted and reflected fields are considered. The interaction of multi-cavity defects in 50-wave scattering is also investigated. Numerical calculation by the boundary element method has been carried out to predict near field solution of scattered fields of ultrasonic SH-wave. The presented results would be useful to improve the sensitivity of flaw defection for inverse analysis and pursue quantitative nondestructive evaluation for inverse problem.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.112-121
• /
• 1994

This paper discusses the feasibility of ultrasonic C-scan technique for nondestructive evaluation of spot weld quality. Ultrasonic evaluation for spot weld quality was performed by immersion method with the mechanical and the electronic scanning of point-focussed ultrasonic beam(25 MHz). For the sake of the approach to the quantitative measurement of nugget diameter and the discrimination of the corona bond from nugget, preliminary infinitesimal gap experiment by newton ring is tried in order to set up the optimum ultrasonic test condition. Ultrasonic image data obtained were confirmed and compared by optical microscope and SAM(Scanning Acoustic Microscope) observation of the spot-weld cross section. The results show that the nugget diameter can be measured with the accuracy of 1.0mm, and voids included in nugget can be detected to $10{\mu}m$ extent with simplicity and accuracy. Finally, it was found that it is necessary to make a profound study of definite discrimination of corona bond from nugget and the approach of quantitative evaluation of nugget diameter by utilizing the various image processing techniques.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.11-22
• /
• 1997

It is very essential to get the accurate classification of defects in primary pressure vessel and piping welds for the safety of nuclear power plant. Ultrasonic testing has been widely applied to inspect primary pressure vessel and piping welds of nuclear power plants during PSI / ISI. Classification of flaws in weldments from their ultrasonic scattering signals is very important in quantitative nondestructive evaluation. This problem is ideally suited to a modern ultrasonic Pattern recognition technique. Here, a brief discussion on systematic approach to this methodology is presented including ultrasonic feature extraction, feature selection and classification. A stronger emphasis is placed on Fuzzy-UTSCS (UT signal classification system) as efficient classifiers for many practical classification problems. As an example Fuzzy-UTSCS is applied to classify flaws in ferrite pressure vessel weldments into two types such as linear and volumetric. It is shown that Fuzzy-UTSCS is able to exhibit higher performance than other classifiers in the defect classification.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.30 no.5
• /
• pp.479-483
• /
• 2010

9% nickel alloy steels used for LNG, cryogenic liquid, storage tank are welded with dissimilar Inconel or Hastelloy welding rod and the weldment shows similar characteristic with the dissimilar metal weld of low carbon steel and austenitic stainless steel. Band type indications are sometimes shown on the film during radiography test of the weldments. Thus this study identified whether the indications are non-relevant indications through material, radiographic test, ultrasonic test, liquid penetrant test and microstructure analysis and also proposed radiography film interpretation and cause of band type indications.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.23 no.1
• /
• pp.30-37
• /
• 2003

In order to replace the manual ultrasonic testing(UT) with an automated UT(AUT), a scanner which enables us to control the positions of a transducer is essential. Encoders have been commonly used to obtain the position information from the conventional scanners controlled by motor. Encoders have various advantages in many aspects. However, if the slip of motor wheel occurs during scanning, various errors are involved in the position accuracy. Thus, the position information of encoders becomes meaningless in case of slip. The reliability of AUT results nay become serious problem. Hence, slip must be avoided, but it can not be completely avoided at present time. In this paper, a new idea that surface wave is used to solve this problem and replace encoders has been proposed. It is shown that this idea can be employed in AUT scanner without encoders. That is, one transducer transmitting surface wave is fixed and the other transducer attached to the scanner receives UT signal. Then, computer calculates the present position of scanner based on the information given by surface wave. Thus, the movement of a scanner can be controlled by the amount of input based on the information obtained.