• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.650-657
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• 2001

This paper explains the process of designing a shielded encircling remote field eddy current (RFEC) probe to inspect nuclear fuel cladding tubes and investigates resulting signal characteristics. To force electromagnetic energy from exciter coil to penetrate into the tube, exciter coil is shielded outside by laminations of iron insulated electrically from each other. Effects of shielding and the proper operating frequency are studied by the finite element analysis and the location for sensor coil is decided. However, numerically simulated signals using the designed probe do not clearly show the defect indication when the sensor passes a defect and the other indication appeared as the exciter passes the defect is affected by the shape of shielding structure, which demonstrates that the sensor is directly affected by exciter fields. For this reason, the sensor is also shielded outside and this shielding dramatically improves signal characteristics. Numerical modeling with the finally designed probe shows very similar signal characteristics to those of inner diameter RFEC probe. That is, phase signals show almost equal sensitivity to inner diameter and outer diameter defects and the linear relationship between phase signal strength and defect depth is observed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.339-345
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• 2008

The heat exchanger tube in nuclear power plants is mainly fabricated from nonferromagnetic material such as a copper, titanium, and inconel alloy, but the moisture separator & reheater tube in the turbine system is fabricated from ferromagnetic material such as a carbon steel or ferrite stainless steel which has a good mechanical properties in harsh environments of high pressure and temperature. Especially, the moisture separator & reheater tubes, which use steam as a heat transfer media, typically employ a tubing with integral fins to furnish higher heat transfer rates. The ferromagnetic tube typically shows superior properties in high pressure and temperature environments than a nonferromagnetic material, but can make a trouble during the normal operation of power plants because the ferrous tube has service-induced damage forms including a steam cutting, erosion, mechanical wear, stress corrosion cracking, etc. Therefore, nondestructive examination is periodically performed to evaluate the tube integrity. Now, the remote field testing(RFT) technique is one of the solution for examination of ferromagnetic tube because the conventional eddy current technique typically can not be applied to ferromagnetic tube such as a ferrite stainless steel due to the high electrical permeability of ferrous tube. In this study, we have designed RFT probes, calibration standards, artificial flaw specimen, and probe pusher-puller necessary for field application, and have successfully carry out RFT examination of the moisture separator & reheater tube of nuclear power plants.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.152-159
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• 2014

Recently. utilization of remote sensing exploration and cloud computing has been extended to efficient measurement, store, and update of bathymetry map data according to cloud computing technology. In the field of real ocean, water depth measurements and measurement data management, distribution, and display equipment for the development and dissemination have generated a lot of time and cost. To improve these problems, through real-time three-dimensional display system at this location, we can determine the importance of measurement activities, and reduce the time and cost of measurement activities. Data measured from marine probe vessels and remote sensing exploration equipments and other various channels can be handled and managed. In this paper, we propose a realtime three-dimensional display system through the depth measurements from remote sensing exploration. The proposed real-time three-dimensional display system can be effectively applied in the field of measurement of the topographical survey of the land as well as bathymetry of the sea.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.518-525
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• 2001

As steam generator (SG) tubes have aged, new and subtle flaws have appeared. Most of them start growing from outside the tubes. Since signals from outer diameter (OD) defects are very weak compared to those from inner diameter (ID) defects in the conventional eddy current testing due to skin effect, this paper studies the feasibility of using remote field eddy current (RFEC) technique, which has shown equal sensitivity to ID and OD defects in the ferromagnetic pipe inspection. Finite element modeling studies show that the operating frequency needs to be increased up to a few hundred kHz in order for RFEC effects to occur in the nonmagnetic SG tube. The proper distance between exciter and sensor coils is also found to be about 1.5 OD, which is half the distance used in the ferromagnetic pipe inspection. Defect signals obtained by the designed RFEC probe show equal sensitivity to ID and OD defects and the existence of linear relationship between defect depth and phase signal strength. These results tell us that RFEC inspection is feasible even in nonmagnetic steam generator tubes.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetics Society
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.305-308
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• 2006

Magnetic flux leakage (MFL) pigs are traditionally used for the detection of gross corrosion on steel pipelines used for the transmission of natural gas. Alternative nondestructive evaluation (NDE) modalities are required for the detection of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) which tends to exist in colonies oriented axially along the length of the pipeline. This paper describes the use of multiphase rotating magnetic fields in the remote region of the probe as a possible SCC detection mechanism. Details of a prototype pig and test rig are given and the challenges associated with the finite element modeling of the device are discussed. Initial experimental results show that this novel NDE modality is sensitive to axially oriented tight cracks.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.13-19
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• 2015

Steam generator is one of the most important component of nuclear power plant, and it's integrity and reliability are to be assured to high level by pre-service inspection and in-service inspection. To improve the reliability of steam generator heat exchanger tubes and to secure the management of nuclear power plant safely, KHNP CRI recently has developed eddy current testing system for steam generator. KHNP CRI have performed a series of experimental verification and field application to confirm the performance of the developed ECT system in accordance with ASME Code requirements. The ECT system consists of a remote data acquisition unit, an ECT signal acquisition and analysis software, a water chamber robot controller and a probe push-puller. In this paper, we will details of the developed ECT system and the software and their experimental performance. And also we will report the field applying performance and the issues for further steps.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1999.07a
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• pp.290-292
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• 1999

핵연료봉이나 제어봉과 같은 봉구조물의 검사를 위하여 원격장와전류 효과를 낼 수 있는 탐촉자를 설계하고 탐상주파수를 유한요소해석을 통해 설정하였다. 핵연료봉을 대상으로 한 해석에서 exciter coil 주변을 차폐하고 500kHz의 주파수를 사용한 결과 전위계곡과 위상매듭의 존재가 나타나 원격장와전류 효과가 구현되었음을 확인하였다. exciter와 sensor coil로 이루어진 탐촉자를 이동시키면서 예측한 탐상신호에서는 센서를 원격장 의치에 고정시켰을 때, 결함이 센서를 지날 때의 위상신호와 결함이 exciter를 지날 때의 위상신호가 서로 달리 나타났다. 또한, 외부결함과 내부결함이 센서를 지날 때의 위상지연은 작지만 서로 반대의 경향으로 나타났으며, 두 종류의 결함이 exciter를 지날 때는 위상지연이 상대적으로 크게 줄어들고 외부/내부 결함에 상관없이 신호가 비슷하게 나타남을 볼 수 있었다. 이러한 신호형태는 자성체 관의 탐상에서 내, 외부 결함신호가 구별이 안되고, 동일한 위상신호가 항상 쌍으로 나타나는 것과 비교할 때, 신호해석을 훨씬 수월하게 해 줄 수 있을 것이라고 판단된다.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.35 no.5_1
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• pp.665-679
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• 2019

Mesoscale soil moisture measurement from the promising Cosmic-Ray Neutron Probe (CRNP) is expected to bridge the gap between large scale microwave remote sensing and point-based in-situ soil moisture observations. Traditional calibration based on $N_0$ method is used to convert neutron intensity measured at the CRNP to field scale soil moisture. However, the static calibration parameter $N_0$ used in traditional technique is insufficient to quantify long term soil moisture variation and easily influenced by different time-variant factors, contributing to the high uncertainties in CRNP soil moisture product. Consequently, in this study, we proposed a modified traditional calibration method, so-called Dynamic-$N_0$ method, which take into account the temporal variation of $N_0$ to improve the CRNP based soil moisture estimation. In particular, a nonlinear regression method has been developed to directly estimate the time series of $N_0$ data from the corrected neutron intensity. The $N_0$ time series were then reapplied to generate the soil moisture. We evaluated the performance of Dynamic-$N_0$ method for soil moisture estimation compared with the traditional one by using a weighted in-situ soil moisture product. The results indicated that Dynamic-$N_0$ method outperformed the traditional calibration technique, where correlation coefficient increased from 0.70 to 0.72 and RMSE and bias reduced from 0.036 to 0.026 and -0.006 to $-0.001m^3m^{-3}$. Superior performance of the Dynamic-$N_0$ calibration method revealed that the temporal variability of $N_0$ was caused by hydrogen pools surrounding the CRNP. Although several uncertainty sources contributed to the variation of $N_0$ were not fully identified, this proposed calibration method gave a new insight to improve field scale soil moisture estimation from the CRNP.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.164-170
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• 2004

Liquid Injection Nozzle(LIN) tube and Calandria tube(CT) in pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) are .ross-aligned horizontally. These neighboring tubes can contact each other due to the sag of the calandria tube resulting from the irradiation creep and thermal creep, and fuel load, etc. In order to judge the contact which might be the safety concern, the remote field eddy current (RFEC) technology is applied for the gap measurement in this paper. LIN can be detected by inserting the RFEC probe into pressure tube (PT) at the crossing point directly. To obtain the optimal conditions of the RFEC inspection, the sensitivity, penetration and noise signals are considered simultaneously. The optimal frequency and coil spacing are 1kHz and 200mm respectively. Possible noises during LIN signal acquisition are caused by lift-off, PT thickness variation, and gap variation between PT and CT. The simulated noise signals were investigated by the Volume Integral Method(VIM). Signal analysis on the voltage plane describes the amplitude and shape of LIN and possible defects at several frequencies. All the RFEC measurements in the laboratory were done in variance with the CT/LIN gap and showed the relationship between the LIN gap and the signal parameters by analyzing the voltage plane signals.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2020.06a
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• pp.125-125
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• 2020

European Space Agency's Sentinel-1 has an improved spatial and temporal resolution, as compared to previous satellite data such as Envisat Advanced SAR (ASAR) or Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT). Thus, the assumption used for low-resolution retrieval algorithms used by ENVISAT ASAR or ASCAT is not applicable to Sentinel-1, because a higher degree of land surface heterogeneity should be considered for retrieval. The assumption of homogeneity over land surface is not valid any more. In this study, considering that soil roughness is one of the key parameters sensitive to soil moisture retrievals, various approaches are discussed. First, soil roughness is spatially inverted from Sentinel-1 backscattering over Yanco sites in Australia. Based upon this, Artificial Neural Networks data (feedforward multiplayer perception, MLP, Levenberg-Marquadt algorithm) are compared with Fractal approach (brownian fractal, Hurst exponent of 0.5). When using ANNs, training data are achieved from theoretical forward scattering models, Integral Equation Model (IEM). and Sentinel-1 measurements. The network is trained by 20 neurons and one hidden layer, and one input layer. On the other hand, fractal surface roughness is generated by fitting 1D power spectrum model with roughness spectra. Fractal roughness profile is produced by a stochastic process describing probability between two points, and Hurst exponent, as well as rms heights (a standard deviation of surface height). Main interest of this study is to estimate a spatial variability of roughness without the need of local measurements. This non-local approach is significant, because we operationally have to be independent from local stations, due to its few spatial coverage at the global level. More fundamentally, SAR roughness is much different from local measurements, Remote sensing data are influenced by incidence angle, large scale topography, or a mixing regime of sensors, although probe deployed in the field indicate point data. Finally, demerit and merit of these approaches will be discussed.