• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.54-62
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• 2013

In this study, a wireless and non-power SAW (surface acoustic wave) temperature sensor was developed. The single inter-digital transducer (IDT) of SAW temperature sensor of which resonance frequency is 434 MHz was fabricated on $128^{\circ}$ rot-X $LiNbO_3$ piezoelectric substrate by semiconductor processing technology. To find optimal acoustic reflector for SAW temperature sensor, various kinds of acoustic reflectors were fabricated and their reflection characteristics were analyzed. The IDT type acoustic reflector showed better reflection characteristic than other reflectors. The wireless temperature sensing system consisting of SAW temperature sensor with dipole antenna and a microprocessor based control circuit with dipole antenna for transmitting signal to activate the SAW temperature sensor and receiving the signal from SAW temperature sensor was developed. The result with wireless SAW temperature sensing system showed that the frequency of SAW temperature sensor was linearly decreased with the increase of temperature in the range of 40 to $80^{\circ}C$ and the developed wireless SAW temperature sensing system showed the excellent performance with the coefficient of determination of 0.99.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.6-12
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• 2010

Fiber optic sensor using fiber Bragg grating(FBG) probes is used for monitoring strain and temperature distributed on the wide surfaces of large structures. In this paper, in order to use many FBG probes in one optical fiber line, we propose a complex multiplexing technology which is composed of two techniques, one is time division multiplexing and another is wavelength division multiplexing. However, we only investigate the characteristics of time division multiplexing because FBG sensors basically can be operated by wavelength division multiplexing. We calculate the optimal reflectivities and the lengthwise location of five FBG probes in serial connection in order to obtain the unique reflected intensities from the FBG probes. We fabricate five FBG probes with the reflectivities of 13%, 16%, 25%, 40% and 80%, which are determined by the theoretical calculation, and observe the signal reflected from each FBG in the time domain from the experiment. There are differences between experimental and theoretical results caused by the signal noise and the differences of reflectivities of FBG probes. But the experimental results shows the reflected signals of five FBG probes which prove the availability of complex multiplexing.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.18-26
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• 2016

The semiconductor industry is one of the key industries of Korea, which has continued growing at a steady annual growth rate. Important technology for the semiconductor industry is high integration of devices. This is to increase the memory capacity for unit area, of which key is photolithography. The photolithography refers to a technique for printing the shadow of light lit on the mask surface on to wafer, which is the most important process in a semiconductor manufacturing process. In this study, the width and step-height of wafers patterned through this process were measured to ensure uniformity. The widths and inter-plate heights of the specimens patterned using photolithography were measured using transmissive digital holography. A transmissive digital holographic interferometer was configured, and nine arbitrary points were set on the specimens as measured points. The measurement of each point was compared with the measurements performed using a commercial device called scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Alpha Step. Transmission digital holography requires a short measurement time, which is an advantage compared to other techniques. Furthermore, it uses magnification lenses, allowing the flexibility of changing between high and low magnifications. The test results confirmed that transmissive digital holography is a useful technique for measuring patterns printed using photolithography.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.95-102
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• 2009

A steam generator (boiler) in thermal power plants, consisting of more than 30,000 parts and components, can lead to the plant shutdown with damage to even the small part of the components; esp., like weld failures on boiler tubes. Consequently it is greatly demanded to improve the quality of the weld on the boiler tube for the stable operation of the power plants. Because of the feature of the welding, which is done past by melting the work pieces and adding a filler material that cools to become a strong coalescence, there is a great possibility that weld failures take place. As a result, it is regulated to make a non-destructive testing, like radiography test, to detect defects and flaws in the weld. The current film radiography test provides a lower image quality exceeding 2.0% of a basic quality level for a penetrameter, it is very likely to fail to detect micro defect. As a result, the prevention for the boiler tube failure has not been made effectively. In this study, computed radiography technology has been applied as a digital radiography test to the boiler tube weld, and Se-75 radiation source was used to improve the image quality, instead of Ir-192 source. As a result of this study, it is proven to save the time and cost for test and to enhance the quality level of penetrameter penetrating image, which enables to upgrade the quality of radiography test to the boiler tube weld.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.271-279
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• 2006

Acoustic Emission (AE) technology is an effective nondestructive testing for continuous monitoring of defect formation and failures in structural materials. This paper presents a source location model using Acoustic Emission (AE) sensors in a Pre-Stressed Concrete (PSC) beam and the evaluation of the model was performed through lab experiments. 54 AE events were made on the surface of the 5m-PSC beam using a Schmidt Hammer and arrival times were measured with 7AE sensors. The source location f3r each event was estimated using least squares. The results were compared with actual positions and the RMSE (Root Mean Square Errors) was about 2cm.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.115-125
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• 2015

Background: Residual stress always exists on any kind of welded area. This residual stress can cause the welded material to crack or fracture. For many years, the hole-drilling method has been widely used for measuring residual stress. However, this method is destructive. Nowadays, electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) can be used to measure residual stress with or without the hole-drilling method. ESPI is an optical nondestructive testing methods that use the speckle effect. Mechanical properties can be measured by calculation of the phase difference by the variation of temperature, pressure, or loading force. Methods: In this paper, the residual stress on the butt-welded area is measured by using ESPI with a suggested numerical calculation. Two types of specimens are prepared. Type I is made of pure base metal part and type II has a welded part at the center. These specimens are tensile tested with a material test system. At the same time, the ESPI system was applied to this test. Results: From the results of ESPI, the elastic modulus and the residual stress around the welded area can be calculated and estimated. Conclusion: With this result, it is confirmed that the residual stress on the welded area can be measured with high precision by ESPI.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.7
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• pp.1784-1790
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• 2019

Accurate and consistent characterization of defects in steam generator tubes (SGT) in nuclear power plants is one of the key issues in the field of nondestructive testing since the large number of signals to be analyzed in a time-limited in-service inspection causes a serious problem in practice. This paper presents an effective approach to this difficult task of automated classification of motorized rotating pancake coil (MRPC) eddy current flaw acquired from tube specimens with deliberated defects using deep neural networks (DNN). This approach consists of five steps, namely, the data acquisition using the MRPC probe in the tube, the signal preprocessing to make data more suitable for training DNN, the data augmentation for boosting a training performance, the training of DNN, and finally demonstration of the trained DNN for discriminating the axial and circumferential defects. The high performance obtained in this study shows that DNN is useful for classification of defects in tubes from the MRPC eddy current signals even though the number of signals is very large.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.727-735
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• 2021

Recently, non-destructive health monitoring methods such as magnetic flux leakage (MFL) method, have become popular due to their advantages over destructive methods. Currently, numerical study on this field has been limited to simplified studies by only obtaining MFL instead of induced voltage inside coil sensor. In this study, it was proposed to perform a novel numerical simulation of MFL's coil sensor by considering vital parameters including specimen's motion with constant velocity and saturation status of specimen in time domain. A steel-rod specimen with two stepwise cross-sectional changes (i.e., 21% and 16%) was fabricated using low carbon steel. In order to evaluate the results of numerical simulation, an experimental test was also conducted using a magnetic probe, with same size specimen and test parameters, exclusively. According to comparative results of numerical simulation and experimental test, similar signal amplitude and signal pattern were observed. Thus, proposed numerical simulation method can be used as a reliable source to check efficiency of sensor probe when different size specimens with different defects should be inspected.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.481-487
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• 2020

Radiation measurement technology has steadily improved and its usage is expanding in various industries such as nuclear medicine, security search, satellite, nondestructive testing, environmental industries and the domain of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Especially, the simultaneous measurements of gamma rays and neutrons can be even more critical for nuclear safety management of spent nuclear fuel and monitoring of the nuclear material. A semiconductor detector comprising cadmium, zinc, and tellurium (CZT) enables to detect gamma-rays due to the significant atomic weight of the elements via immediate neutron and gamma-ray detection. Semiconductor sensors might be used for nuclear safety management by monitoring nuclear materials and spent nuclear fuel with high spatial resolution as well as providing real-time measurements. We aim to introduce a portable nuclide-analysis device that enables the simultaneous measurements of neutrons and gamma rays using a CZT sensor. The detector has a high density and wide energy band gap, and thus exhibits highly sensitive physical characteristics and characteristics are required for performing neutron and gamma-ray detection. Portable nuclide-analysis device is used on NPP-decommissioning sites or the purpose of nuclear nonproliferation, it will rapidly detect the nuclear material and provide radioactive-material information. Eventually, portable nuclide-analysis device can reduce measurement time and economic costs by providing a basis for rational decision making.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Heat Treatment
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.198-204
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• 2010

Modified 9Cr-1Mo steels possess excellent high-temperature mechanical properties and are widely used in energy conversion industries. However, in-service materials degradation, such as softening, carbide-induced embrittlement, temper embrittlement, etc., can take place during long-term operation. Evolution of microstructure due to service exposure to high temperature has a strong effect on the performance of heat resistant steels. In case of modified 9Cr-1Mo steels, precipitation of $Fe_2Mo$-type laves phases and coarsening of $M_{23}C_6$-type carbides are the primary cause of degradation of mechanical properties such as toughness, hardness, tensile strength and creep resistance. This study was aimed at finding reliable parameter for assessing the integrity of modified 9Cr-1Mo steels. Characteristic parameters were attained between mechanical and ultrasonic properties.