• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.378-385
• /
• 1995

The ultrasonic non-destructive testing uses the directivity of the ultrasonic pulse wave which propagates in one direction. The directivity is expressed as the relationship between the propagate direction and its sound pressure. The directivity of ultrasonic wave is closely related to determination of probe arrangement, testing sensitivity, scanning pitch and defect location and characterization. The paper measured the directivity of shear wave, which reflected from artificial defect located in weld metal zone in butt welded joint similar model made of pyrex glass by using visualization method. 2 MHz and 4 MHz angle probes were used to measure the directivity of reflection wave at the artificial defect. The directivity of shear waves reflected from the defect was different according to the probe position and the shape of butt welded joint. The difference of directivity of reflection wave was existed between 2 MHz and 4 MHz angle probes. The angle of reflection wave became equal to angle of incidence as increase of the height of excess metal.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.31 no.1
• /
• pp.47-52
• /
• 2011

An electromagnetic acoustic transducer(EMAT) is a non-contact transducer which can transmit the ultrasonic guided waves into specimens without couplant. And it can easily generate specific guided waves such as SH(shear horizontal) or Lamb waves by altering the design of coil and magnet. In this study, the SH wave, which is generated by EMAT, has been applied to estimate the thickness-reduction in a steel plate. Especially, the interesting feature of the dispersive behavior in selected wave modes is used to detect the thickness-reduction. Experimental results show that the reduction-level can be quantified by the measurement of the group velocity of the wave which passes though the thinning area.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.20 no.6
• /
• pp.501-510
• /
• 2000

Recently, advanced signal analysis which is called "time-frequency analysis" has been used widely in nondestructive evaluation applications. Wavelet transform(WT) and Wigner Distribution are the most advanced techniques for processing signals with time-varying spectra. Wavelet analysis method is an attractive technique for evaluation of material characterization nondestructively. Wavelet transform is applied to the time-frequency analysis of ultrasonic echo waveform obtained by an ultrasonic pulse-echo technique. In this study, the feasibility of noise suppression of ultrasonic flaw signal and frequency-dependent ultrasonic group velocity and attenuation coefficient using wavelet analysis of ultrasonic echo waveform have been verified experimentally. The Gabor function is adopted the analyzing wavelet. The wavelet analysis shows that the variations of ultrasonic group velocity and attenuation coefficient due to the change of material characterization can be evaluated at each frequency. Furthermore, to assure the enhancement of detectability and naw sizing performance, both computer simulated results and experimental measurements using wavelet signal processing are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the noise suppression of ultrasonic flaw signal obtained from austenitic stainless steel weld including EDM notch.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.95-102
• /
• 2005

There are many tube and pipeline in nuclear power plant under high temperature and high pressure. Erosion and corrosion defects were expected on these tube and pipe-line by environmental and mechanical factors. These erosion and corrosion defects ran be evaluated by ultrasonic technique. In these study, Scanning Laser Source(SLS) technique was applied to detect defect and construct image. This technique also makes detection possible on rough and curved surfaces such as tube and pipe-line by scanning. Conventional ultrasonic scanning technique requires immersion of specimen or water jet for transferring ultrasonic wave between transducer and specimen. However, this SLS technique does not need contacting and couplant to generate surface wave and to get flaw images. Therefore, this SLS technique has several advantages, for complicated production inspection, non-contact, remote from specimen, and high resolution. In this study, SLS images were obtained with various conditions of generation laser ultrasound and receiving in order to enhance detectability of flaws on the tube. Stress corrosion cracks were produced on tube and images of stress corrosion cracks were constructed by using SLS technique.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.29 no.5
• /
• pp.485-492
• /
• 2009

The thermal fatigue crack(TFC) is one of the life-limiting mechanisms at the nuclear power plant operating conditions. In order to evaluate the structural integrity, various non-destructive test methods such as radiographic test, ultrasonic test and eddy current are used in the industrial field. However, these methods have restrictions that defect detection is possible after the crack growth. For this reason, acoustic emission testing(AET) is becoming one of powerful inspection methods, because AET has an advantage that possible to monitor the structure continuously. Generally, every mechanism that affects the integrity of the structure or equipment is a source of acoustic emission signal. Therefore the noise filtering is one of the major works to the almost AET researchers. In this study, acoustic emission signal was collected from the pipes which were in the successive thermal fatigue cycles. The data were filtered based on the results from previous experiments. Through the data analysis, the signal characteristics to distinguish the effective signal from the noises for the TFC were proven as the waveform difference. The experiment results provide preliminary information for the acoustic emission technique to the continuous monitoring of the structure failure detection.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
• /
• v.14 no.1
• /
• pp.73-80
• /
• 1995

In this paper, Polarity Thresholding(PT) algorithm has been studied to enhance the received signal in ultrasonic inspection of the stainless-steel(SUS 304) which is the primary piping material of a nuclear power plant. The spectral decomposition components obtained by splitting the spectrum of received signals are composed of dispersive signal of the interference pattern produced by the grain boundaries and nondispersive signal by the flaw. PT algorithm enhance the SNR of received signal by using above properties. In experiment the stainless-steel has been chosen as the sample and heat-treated at 1125, 1150, 1175, and $1200^\circ{C}$, respectively. And the flat-bottom hole type defects have been made artificially in samples. The pulse-echo signals from the sample by using ultrasonic transducer of center frequency 5 MHz have been processed by PT algorithm. It has been shown that PT algorithm enhanced the SNR by average 14.2 dB.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.17 no.4
• /
• pp.248-261
• /
• 1997

Ultrasonic pattern recognition is the most effective approach to the problem of discriminating types of flaws in weldments based on ultrasonic flaw signals. In spite of significant progress in the research on this methodology, it has not been widely used in many practical ultrasonic inspections of weldments in industry. Hence, for the convenient application of this approach in many practical situations, we develop an intelligent ultrasonic signature classification software which can discriminate types of flaws in weldments based on their ultrasonic signals using various tools in artificial intelligence such as neural networks. This software shows the excellent performance in an experimental problem where flaws in weldments are classified into two categories of cracks and non-cracks. This performance demonstrates the high possibility of this software as a practical tool for ultrasonic flaw classification in weldments.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.23 no.5
• /
• pp.455-463
• /
• 2003

Adaptive noise cancellation techniques are ideally suitable for reducing spatially varying noise due to the grain structure of material in ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation. Grain noises have an un-correlation property, while flaw echoes are correlated. Thus, adaptive filtering algorithms use the correlation properties of signals to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the output signal. In this paper, a multi-stage adaptive noise cancellation (MANC) method using adaptive least mean square error (LMSE) filter for enhancing flaw detection in ultrasonic signals is proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.52-60
• /
• 1991

The importance and role of preservice and inservice inspection(PSI/ISI) for nuclear power plant components are intimately related to plant design, safety, reliability and operation etc.. The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute(KAERI) has been performing PSI/ISI in Korea since the PSI of Kori nuclear power plant, unit 1 had been performed in 1977. KAERI has localized PSI/ISI technology and has done much experience in ultrasonic flaw detection, evaluation and its excavation on the weldments of large pressure vessels. The results of flaw estimation using ultrasonic examination are compared with the actual flaw sizes revealed by field excavation. KAERI's experience regarding PSI/ISI was described and some discussions were added.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.32-37
• /
• 1990

A computer controlled 5 axis ultrasonic testing system is developed in order to detect flaws in special parts with complex shape. The various kinds of ultrasonic test can be performed automatically using computer program which was developed by DHI(Daewoo Heavy Industries Ltd.). By use of this computer program, the detector location can be programed and the amplitude signal of echo can be processed digitally. The test results can be plotted graphically on a high resolution display monitor in real time base. The test data can be also saved in magnetic memory devices(HDD or FDD) as well as in the form of hard copy through color printer. The computer software contains c- scan, c+a scan processing programs as well as statistical analysis for test data.