• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05a
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• pp.250-255
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• 2007

Steam generator tubes play an important role in safety because they constitute one of the primary barriers between the radioactive and non-radioactive sides of the nuclear power plant. For this reason, the integrity of the tubes is essential in minimizing the leakage possibility of radioactive water. The integrity of the tubes is evaluated based on NDE (non-destructive evaluation) inspection results. Especially ECT (eddy current test) method is usually used for detecting the flaws in steam generator tubes. However, detection capacity of the NDE is not perfect and all of the "real flaws" which actually existing in steam generator tunes is not known by NDE results. Therefore reliability of NDE system is one of the essential parts in assessing the integrity of steam generators. In this study POD (probability of detection) of ECT system for ODSCC in steam generator tubes is evaluated using multivariate logistic regression. The cracked tube specimens are made using the withdrawn steam generator tubes. Therefore the cracks are not artificial but real. Using the multivariate logistic regression method, continuous POD surfaces are evaluated from hit (detection) and miss (no detection) binary data obtained from destructive and non-destructive evaluation of the cracked tubes. Length and depth of cracks are considered in multivariate logistic regression and their effects on detection capacity are evaluated.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.321-329
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• 1998

Structural integrity of nuclear components is important for a safe operation of nuclear power plants. Therefore, nuclear power plants require to perform reliable, periodic inservice inspections. Korea Electric Power Company(KEPCO) operates the entire Korean nuclear power plants. Since nuclear power plant safety and the associated inservice inspection(ISI) are under the plant owner's responsibility, Korea Electric Power Research Institute(KEPRI), the R&D division of KEPCO, has established the ISI NDE Total Support system(TSS) for an efficient performance of ISI tasks, and initiated both key ISI NDE technology development program and traing & qualification system development program for an independent ISI operation. This paper describes details of these programs.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.185-191
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• 2012

Typically, a wedge is involved to generate effectively high inspection angle in pipe weld inspection using phased array ultrasonic technique. But the usage of this wedge for weld or access limited area can cause coverage limitation for the examination volume because of the wedge front length. Therefore, the shear wave phased array probe which can generate high inspection angle without wedge is essentially necessary. In this paper, the shear wave phased array ultrasonic probe which can generate high inspection angle designed by modeling and manufactured from the modelling result. And this shear wave probe tested whether it can detect and sizing for EDM test block that contains various depth. As results, the experimental results show that the designed shear wave phased array probe can detect and size with reliable accuracy. Therefore if this phased array probe apply in field inspection, it is expected that it show more reliable inspection result for plant structure having access limitation.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.240-245
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• 2001

Ultrasonic inspection system is consisted of the operator, equipment and procedure. The reliability of results in ultrasonic inspection is affected by its ability. Furthermore, the reliability of nondestructive testing is influenced by the inspection environment, other materials and types of defect. Therefore, it is very difficult to estimate the reliability of NDT due to various factors. In this study, the probability of detection, used logistic probability model and Monte Carlo simulation, estimated the reliability of ultrasonic inspection. The utility of the NDT reliability assesment is verified by the analysis of the data from round robin test applied these models.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.378-383
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• 2004

The Korean Performance Demonstration(KPD) System for the ultrasonic testing personnel, equipments and procedures applicable to the Class 1 and 2 piping examination for nuclear power plant in Korea has been established. A round robin test was conducted in order to compare the examination results by the method of Performance Demonstration(PD) with the traditional dB-drop method. The round robin test shows that the reliability of the PD method is better than that of the dB-drop method. As a result, adoption of the PD method to the in-service inspection of the nuclear power plants will improve the reliability of the ultrasonic test results.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.206-212
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• 2000

The guided wave mode conversion phenomena were investigated for the NDE of a plate-like structure with thickness variation. The ratios of reflection and transmission (R/T) were measured via the self-calibrating procedure which allows us to obtain experimental guided wave data in a more reliable way regardless of the coupling uncertainty between transducer & specimen. The results on R/T could be used to determine the thickness reduction of the structure. It was shown that not only the incident modes but also the converted ones need to be considered in the self-calibrating guided wave inspection to extract a reasonable correlation between experimental data & the thickness variation. Through this study, the potential of guided wave inspection as a quantitative NDE technique was explored based on the combined concept of self-calibration & multi-mode conversion in guided wave scattering problems.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.248-255
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• 2009

After several damages by PWSCC were found in the world, USNRC and PNNL(Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) started the research on PWSCC under the project name of PINC. The aim of the project was 1) to fabricate representative NDE mock-ups with flaws to simulate PWSCCs, 2) to identify and quantitatively assess NDE methods for accurately detecting, sizing and characterizing PWSCCs, 3) to document the range of locations and morphologies of PWSCCs and 4) to incorporate results with other results of ongoing PWSCC research programs, as appropriate. Korea nuclear industries have also been participating in the project. Thermally and mechanically cracked-four mockups were prepared and phased array and manual ultrasonic testing(UT) techniques were applied. The results and lessons learned from the preliminary RRT are summarized as follows: 1) Korea RRT teams performed the RRT successfully. 2) Crack detection probability of the participating organizations was an average 87%, 80% and 80% respectively. 3) RMS error of the crack sizing showed comparatively good results. 4) The lessons learned may be helpful to perform the PINC RRT and PSI /ISI in Korea in the future.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.1072-1080
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• 2000

Leakage magnetic flux (LMF) is widely used for non-contact detection of cracks. The combination of optics and LMF offers advantages such as real time inspection, elimination of electrical noise, high spatial resolution, etc. This paper describes a new nondestructive evaluation method based on an original magneto-optical inspection system, which uses a magneto-optical sensor, LMF, and an improved magnetization method. The improved magnetization method has the following characteristics: high observation sensitivity, independence of the crack orientation, and precise transcription of the geometry of a complex crack. The use of vertical magnetization enables the visualization of the length and width of a crack. The inspection system provides the images of the crack, and shows a possibility for the computation of its depth.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.82-88
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• 2003

The nondestructive internal quality evaluation of agricultural products has been strongly required from the needs for individual inspection. Recently, the ultrasonic wave has been considered as a solution fur this problem, and an ultrasonic system was constructed for the ultrasonic NDE of fruits and vegetables in our previous work. In this paper, the practical applicability of our ultrasonic system is tested fur the inspection of internal defects (central cavity) in Atlantic potato. Sound speed and RMS of transmitted ultrasonic wave signal were measured and classification algorithm using 2 dimensional stochastic analysis. was presented. Experimental results showed greater value of sound speed and RMS (root mean square) of transmitted signal in normal samples than in abnormal samples with cavity. Also a stochastic method to distinguish normal and abnormal showed fault detection rate less than 5%.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.61-67
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• 2015

Recently, the initiation of outside diameter stress corrosion cracking (ODSCC) at the tube support plate region of domestic steam generators (SG) with Alloy600 HTMA tubes has been increasing. As a result, SGs with Alloy600 HTMA tubes must be replaced early or are scheduled to be replaced prior to their designed lifetime. ODSCC is one of the biggest threats to the integrity of SG tubes. Therefore, the accurate evaluation of tube integrity to determine ODSCC is needed. Eddy current testing (ECT) is conducted periodically, and its results could be input as parameters for evaluating the integrity of SG tubes. The reliability of an ECT inspection system depends on the performance of the inspection technique and abilty of the analyst. The detection probability and ECT sizing error of degradation are considered to be the performance indices of a nondestructive evaluation (NDE) system. This paper introduces an optimized evaluation method for ECT, as well as the sizing error, including the analyst performance. This study was based on the results of a round robin program in which 10 inspection analysts from 5 different companies participated. The analysis of ECT sizing results was performed using a linear regression model relating the true defect size data to the measured ECT size data.