• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.406-414
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• 2001

Ultrasonic guided waves were explored to apply them to the long range inspection of polyethylene coated steel gas pipes. The steel pipes have such dimensions as 190.7mm inside diameter and 5.3mm thickness. The outside surface of the pipe is coated by a polyethylene layer of $1.9{\pm}0.5mm$ thickness. Non-axisymmetric guided waves were excited on the outside surface of the polyethylene coated pipe by using a 0.5MHz transducer with a variable angle shoe. Frequency and phase velocity tuning was used to find optimum guided wave modes for the inspection. The dispersive characteristics of the modes were analyzed in time-frequency representation obtained by short time Fourier transforms. Sample results were presented for artificial defects such as wall thinning and hole.