• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.133-140
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• 2001

Recently, to assure the integrity of a structural components such as piping pressure vessels and thinning structure, Lamb wave inspection technique has been used in material evaluation. It is very important to select the optimal Lamb wave mode and to analyze the signal accurately because of its unique dispersion properties grnerating several modes within the speci-men. It this study, the feasibility of material evaluation applications using wavelet analysis of Lamb wave has been veir-fied experimentally. These results show as follows; 1)dispersion characteristic of each mode in dispersion curve is demon-strated that A0 mode propagating material surface is useful mode having the lest energy loss and not sensitive to surface condition. 2) it can be detected even the micro defect ($1\times2mm$) fabricated in ultrasonic probe flaw distance (290mm) to axis direction. 3) the wavelet transform which is called "time-frequency analysis" shows the Lamb wave propagation due to the change of materials characterization can be evaluated at each frequency and experimental group velocity of Lamb wave agrees quite well with that of simulated dispersion curve.ion curve.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.70-77
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to compare the quality of digital radiography image with that of classical film images for welded structure in power plants. The CMOS(Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) flat panel detecter and Agfa D5 film are used to image flaw specimens respectively. In the test, CMOS flat panel detector has been determined to have a better image than that of film image. In the IQI(Image Quality Indicator) transmission test, one or two more line can be seen in digital image than in film image. Digital Radiography Test enabled to successfully detect all defects on the weld specimens fabricated with real reheat stem pipe and boiler tube as well. In the specific comparison test, Digital radiography test detected micro flaws in the size of 0.5 mm in length by 0.5 mm in depth. However, film test has limited it to 1.0 mm in length by 1.0 mm in depth. As a result of this study, digital radiography technology is estimated well enough to perform the inspection in the industry with far more cost effective way, compared to the classical film test.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.74 no.1
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• pp.69-82
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• 2020

A significant defect of space structures is the progressive collapse issue which may restrict their applicability. Force limiting devices (FLDs) have been designed to overcome this deficiency, though they don't operate efficiently in controlling the force displacement characteristics. To overcome this flaw, a new type of FLD is introduced in the present study. The "all steel accordion force limiting device" (AFLD) which consists of three main parts including cylindrical accordion solid core, tubular encasing and joint system is constructed and its behavior has been studied experimentally. To improve AFLD's behavior, Finite element analysis has been carried out by developing models in ABAQUS software. A comprehensive parametric study is done by considering the effective design parameters such as core material, accordion wave length and accordion inner diameter. From the results, it is found that AFLD can obtain a perfect control on the force-displacement characteristics as well as attaining the elastic-perfect plastic behavior. Obtaining higher levels of ultimate load carrying capacity, dissipated energy and ductility ratio can be encountered as the main privileges of this device. Ease of construction and erection are found to be further advantages of AFLD. Based on the obtained results, a procedure for predicting AFLD's behavior is offered.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.1
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• pp.228-235
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• 2016

Flaws at dissimilar metal welds (DMWs), such as reactor coolant systems components, Control Rod Drive Mechanism (CRDM), Bottom Mounted Instrumentation (BMI) etc., in nuclear power plants have been found. Notably, primary water stress corrosion cracking (PWSCC) in the DMWs could cause significant reliability problems at nuclear power plants. Therefore, phased array ultrasound is widely used for inspecting surface break cracks and stress corrosion cracks in DMWs. However, inspection of DMWs using phased array ultrasound has a relatively low probability of detection of cracks, because the crystalline structure of welds causes distortion and splitting of the ultrasonic beams which propagates anisotropic medium. Therefore, advanced evaluation techniques of phased array ultrasound are needed for improvement in the probability of detection of flaws in DMWs. Thus, in this study, an investigation of focusing and steering phased array ultrasound in DMWs was carried out using a time reversal technique, and an adaptive focusing technique based on finite element method (FEM) simulation. Also, evaluation of focusing performance of three different focusing techniques was performed by comparing amplitude of phased array ultrasonic signals scattered from the targeted flaw with three different time delays.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.569-571
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• 2010

In this paper, we develop a vision inspection system for inspecting flaws on plastic products such as insufficient moldings, spots, scratches. The inspection algorithm for this system consist of image binarization for curved structure of plastic products, image noise removal using morphology operation, labeling methods for candidate regions and image filtering and calibration method for flaw inspection. In order to improve its performance, we also develop fast image processing algorithm based on GUI. To verify the effectiveness of this system, we conducted evaluation for the system accuracy and the inspection algorithm processing time.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.261-270
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• 2010

This paper presents an analytical investigation for a baseline-free imaging of a defect in plate-like structures using the time-reversal of Lamb waves. We first consider the flexural wave (A0 mode) propagation in a plate containing a defect, and reception and time reversal process of the output signal at the receiver. The received output signal is then composed of two parts: a directly propagated wave and a scattered wave from the defect. The time reversal of these waves recovers the original input signal, and produces two additional side bands that contain the time-of-flight information on the defect location. One of the side band signals is then extracted as a pure defect signal. A defect localization image is then constructed from a beamforming technique based on the time-frequency analysis of the side band signal for each transducer pair in a network of sensors. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme enables the accurate, baseline-free detection of a defect, so that experimental studies are needed to verify the proposed method and to be applied to real structure.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.40-45
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• 2019

Unlike the welded pipes in the primary system of light water nuclear power plants being periodically inspected with in-Service inspection program, relatively small pipes with the outer diameter less than 2 inch have not been regularly inspected to date. However, after several failure reports on the occurrence of critical crack-like defects in small pipes, inspection for the small pipes has been more demanded because it could cause the provisional outage of nuclear power plants. Nevertheless, there's no particular method to examine the small pipes having access limitations for inspection due to various reasons; inaccessible area, excessive radiation exposure, hazardous surrounding, and etc. This study is to develop a reliable inspection technique using torsional and flexural modes of guided wave to detect defects that could occur in inaccessible area. The attribute of guided wave that can travel a long distance enables to inspect even isolated range of the pipe from accessible location. This paper presents a case study of the evaluation test on 3/4" small-bore pipes with guide wave method. The test result demonstrates the crack signal behavior and assures possibility to detect the crack signal in a flexural mode, which is clearly distinguishable from the symmetric structure signal in a torsional mode.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.638-644
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• 2020

This study examines cracks that occur under the load of an aircraft. The life of aircraft vulnerability structures was analyzed and structural fitting improvements were made. Structural integrity and safety have been achieved through preemptive life expectancy and life management of aircraft structures. The crack size inspection capability of the aircraft under analysis is 0.03inch, compared with 0.032inch, which is the lowest of the three vulnerable parts. In addition, the fatigue life analysis results in approximately 1450 operating hours, the lowest of the three vulnerable parts relative to the aircraft's required life of more than 15000 operating hours, which increased the repeat count of the aircraft's initial and re-inspection times, and hence raised the resulting costs and manpower consumption. Finally, the features were improved through structural fitting of the identified three weak parts. The lowest critical crack size was secured at 0.13 through increased structural resistance to generated cracks and increased aircraft safety. The lowest structural fatigue life for cracks occurring during aircraft operation is 25000 operating hours, which are analyzed above the required structural life, resulting in more optimized improvements than the repair costs and excessive fitting range caused by cracks and fractures.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.34-39
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• 2003

Recent deepwater offshore structures in the Gulf of Mexico utilize butt welded tubular joints. Application of a welded tubular joint includes tendons, production risers, and steel catenary risers. Fatigue life assessment of these joints becomes more critical, as the structures to which they are attached are allowed to undergo cyclic and sometimes large displacements around an anchored position. Estimation of the fatigue behavior of these tubular members in the design stage is generally condrcted by using S-N curves, as specified in the codeds and standards. Applying the stress concentration factor of the welded structure to the S-N approach often results in a very conservative assessment, because the stress field acting on the tubular has a non-uniform distribution through the thickness. Fatigue life analysis using fracture mechanics has been applied in the design of the catenary risers. This technology enables the engineer to establish proper requirements on weld quality and inspection acceptance criteria to assure satisfactory structural integrity during its design life. It also provides guidance on proper design curves and a methodology for accounting for the effects of non-uniform stress distribution through the wall thickness. Still, there is inconsistency when designing tubular joints using a conventional S-N approach and when specifying weld flaw acceptance criteria using fracture mechanics approach. This study developed fatigue curves that are consistent with both the S-N approach and the fracture mechanics approach. Accounting for non-uniform stress distribution and threshold stress intensity factor were key parameters in relating both approaches. A series of S-N curves, generated from the fracture mechanics approach, were compared to the existing S-N curves. For flat plate butt joint, the S-N curve generated from fracture mechanics matches with the IIW class 100 curve when initial crack depth was 0.5 mm (0.02 ). The new curves for tubular joint agree very well with the experimental results. The comparison also indicated the degree of conservatism built into the API X design curve.

• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.153-158
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• 2005

The turbulent shear flaw around a surface-mounted vertical wall was investigated using the two-frame PIV(CACTUS 3.1) system. From this study, it is revealed that at least 500 instantaneous velocity field data are required for ensemble average to get reliable turbulence statistics, but only 200 field data are sufficient for the time-averaged mean velocity information The flow has an unsteady recirculation region post vertical wall with bottom gap, followed by a slow relaxation to the fiat-plate boundary layer flow. The time-averaged reattachment length estimated from the streamline distribution is about x/H=3H. The large eddy structure in the separated shear layer seems to have signification influence on the development of the separated shear layer and the reattachment process.