• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.22-25
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• 2012

Welding and/or fusion in polyethylene(PE) system made on site is focused on the control of the welding or fusion process to follow proper procedure. The process control is important, but it is not sufficient for the long term reliability of a pipe system. To achieve the rate of failure close to zero, Non Destructive Testing(NDT) is necessary in addition to joining process control. For electrofusion joints several non-destructive testing methods are available. The ultrasonic phased array technique is possible to detect various defects including wire deviations and regions with lack of fusion. In this studies, testing was carried to detect the defect after electrofusion joining of polyethylene piping is utilized by the ultrasonic phased array technique. From testing data, ultrasonic phased array technique is recommended as a reliable non-destructive testing method.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.236-245
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• 2017

Purpose: There is no established inspection system for composite wind blade during the fabrication stage even though the blades are one of the most important part at wind generation system, but phased array ultrasonic testing method has been continuously studied about wind turbine blade with composite. When wind turbine blade with complex shape by phased array probe is inspected, it is necessary to study for system keeping constant pressure using pressure device. Methods: In this paper, we propose constant pressure device for inspecting wind turbine blade by phased array ultrasonic test method. Design of the device controller is based on Hunt-Crossley model. We evaluate reliability of phased array ultrasonic inspection result that applicated constant pressure device. Result: Defect indication is precise and its error is small when constant pressure mechanism based on Hunt-Crossley model was used. Conclusion: When inspection is progressed using constant pressure mechanism, the reliability of composite wind blade inspection can be improved.

• Journal of Applied Reliability
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.338-346
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• 2016

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to improve the reliability of the composite material blades used for the wind power generator, by applying the phased array ultrasonic testing technique out of the many nondestructive test into the blades. Method: The wind power generation composite blades are used, as a case study, in order to evaluate the reliability of the phased array ultrasonic testing technique. Defects that are most likely occurred in the field are injected into the different locations of the three different types of artificial test pieces and then phased array ultrasonic testing technique are applied to evaluate the reliability of its effectiveness. Result: As a result of the analysis of the defect signals by applying the A scan and B scan simultaneously, depth and width of the defect could be obtained. An area of defect was proportional to the amount of energy by color in B scan image. The larger amount of energy, reflected amount of energy was appeared in the order of red, orange, yellow, blue color. Conclusion: The most reliable testing method to detect the defect in composite blades for wind power generation is considered to be the combination of the other destructive testing technique with the phased array ultrasonic testing since the PAUT alone could not detect all range of the defects in the blades.

• 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.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.8-14
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• 2013

Steam turbine blades and discs of nuclear power plants are one of the most highly stressed areas of turbine rotor, and periodic inspection of the blade roots is essential for monitoring integrity and preventing turbine failure. Ultrasonic technique is applied for volumetric inspection of blade root. However, the complexity of blade root geometry imposes challenges to inspection of blades and discs. Recently, phased array ultrasonic inspection technology is being applied to numerous power generation inspection applications including turbine rotor. The phased array ultrasonic technique requires customized inspection wedges which are generally necessary to generate effectively higher incident angle. But the usage of this wedge can cause access limitation for the lower stage blades of turbine 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 study, feasibility study is conducted for the shear wave phased array ultrasonic probe application to blade and disc inspection. As results, the experimental results show that the shear wave phased array probe can detect the flaw and measure its size with reliable accuracy. Therefore if this shear wave phased array probe is applied to field inspection of blade and disc, more reliable inspection is expected for turbine having access limitation.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.207-216
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• 1999

A phased array is a multi-element piezoelectric device whose elements are individually excited by electric pulses at programmed delay time. One of the advantages of using phased array in nondestructive evaluation (NDE) application over conventional ultrasonic transducers is their great maneuverability of ultrasonic beam. There are some parameters such as the number and the size of the piezoelectric elements and the inter-element spacing of the elements to design phased array transducer. In this study, the characteristic of ultrasonic beam for phased array transducer due to the variation of the number of elements has been simulated for ultrasonic SH-wave on the basis of Huygen's principle. Ultrasonic beam directivity and focusing due to the change of time delay of each element were discussed due to the change of the number of piezoelectric elements. It was found that ultrasonic beam was much more spreaded and hence its sound pressure was decreased as steering angle of ultrasonic beam was increased. In addition, the ability of ultrasonic bean focusing decreased gradually with the increase of focal length at the same piezoelectric elements. However, the ability of beam focusing was improved as the number of consisting elements was increased.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.427-435
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• 2008

Inspection of dissimilar metal welds using phased array ultrasound is not easy at all, because crystalline structure of dissimilar metal welds cause deviation and splitting of the ultrasonic beams. Thus, in order to have focusing and/or steering phased array beams in dissimilar metal welds, proper time delays should be determined by ray tracing. In this paper, we proposed an effective approach to solve this difficult problem. Specifically, we modify the Oglivy's model parameters to describe the crystalline structure of real dissimilar metal welds in a fabricated specimen. And then, we calculate the proper time delay and incident angle of linear phased array transducer in the anisotropic and inhomogeneous material for focusing and/or steering phased array ultrasonic beams on the desired position.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.467-474
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• 2005

The expanded multi-Gaussian beam model has recently been developed that can calculate the radiation beam field from a single, rectangular transducer with great computational efficiency. In this study, this model is adopted to calculate the radiation beam field for a phased array transducer with various time delays to achieve steering and/or focusing. The calculation beam fields are compared to those obtained by well known Rayleigh-Sommerfeld integral that provides the exact solution in order to explore the validity of the expanded multi-Gaussian beam model And then, this study proposes a complete ultrasonic measurement model including the expanded beam model, far-field scattering model and system efficiency, Using the proposed model, phased array ultrasonic testing signals for a flat-bottomed hole with/without focusing were performed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.440-446
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• 2006

The reactor vessel body and closure head are fastened with the stud bolt that is one of crucial parts for safety of the reactor vessels in nuclear power plants. It is reported that the stud bolt is often experienced by fatigue cracks initiated at threads. Stud bolts are inspected by the ultrasonic technique during the overhaul periodically for the prevention of failure which leads to radioactive leakage from the nuclear reactor. The conventional ultrasonic inspection for stud bolts was mainly conducted by reflected echo method based on shadow effect. However, in this technique, there were numerous spurious signals reflected from every oblique surfaces of the thread. In this study, ultrasonic phased array technique was applied to investigate detectability of flaws in stud bolts and characteristics of ultrasonic images corresponding to different scanning methods, that is, sector and linear scan. For this purpose, simplified stud bolt specimens with artificial defects of various depths were prepared.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.13-20
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• 2017

A conventional phased array ultrasonic system offers the ability to steer an ultrasonic beam by applying independent time delays of individual elements in the array and produce an ultrasonic image. In contrast, full matrix capture (FMC) is a data acquisition process that collects a complete matrix of A-scans from every possible independent transmit-receive combination in a phased array transducer and makes it possible to reconstruct various images that cannot be produced by conventional phased array with the post processing as well as images equivalent to a conventional phased array image. In this paper, a basic algorithm based on the LLL mode total focusing method (TFM) that can image crack type flaws is described. And this technique was applied to reconstruct flaw images from the FMC dataset obtained from the experiments and ultrasonic simulation.