• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.19-25
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• 2011

Steam Generator(SG) tube is an important component of Nuclear Power Plant(NPP), which is the pressure boundary between the primary and secondary systems. The integrity of SG tube has been confirmed by the eddy current test every outage. The eddy current technique adopting bobbin probe is currently the primary technique for the steam generator tubing integrity assesment. The bobbin probe is one of the essential components which consist of the whole ECT examination system and provides us a decisive data for the evaluation of tube integrity. Until now, all of the ECT bobbin probes in Korea which is necessary to carry out inspection are imported from overseas. However, KHNP has recently developed the bobbin probe design technology and transferred it to domestic manufacturers to fabricate the probes. This study has been conducted to establish technical requirements applicable to the steam generator tube inspection using the bobbin probes fabricated by the domestic manufactures. The results have been compared with the results obtained by using foreign probe to identify the availability to the steam generator tube inspection. As a result, it is confirmed that the domestic bobbin probe is generally applicable to SG tube inspection in the NPPs.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.125-134
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• 2009

This paper presents details on a tube inspection robotic system and a positioning method of the robot for a steam generator (SG) in nuclear power plants (NPPs). The robotic system is separated into three parts for easy handling, which reduces the radiation exposure during installation. The system has a supporting leg to increase the rigidity of the robot base. Since there are several thousands of tubes to be inspected inside a SG, it is very important to position the tool of the robot at the right tubes even if the robot base is positioned inaccurately during the installation. In order to obtain absolute accuracy of a position, the robot kinematics was mathematically modeled with the modified DH(Denavit-Hartenberg) model and calibrated on site using tube holes as calibration points. To tune the PID gains of a commercial motor driver systematically, the time delay control (TDC) based gain tuning method was adopted. To verify the performance of the robotic system, experiments on a Framatomes 51B Model type SG mockup were undertaken.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.2508-2513
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• 2003

This paper presents a nuclear steam generator tube inspection/maintenance robot system. The robot assists in automatic non-destructive testing and the repair of nuclear steam generator tubes welded into a thick tube sheet that caps a hemispherical or quarter-sphere plenum which is a high-radiation area. For easy carriage and installation, the robot system consists of three separable parts: a manipulator, a water-chamber entering and leaving device for the manipulator and a manipulator base pose adjusting device. A software program to control and manage the robotic system has been developed on the NT based OS to increase the usability. The software program provides a robot installation function, a robot calibration function, a managing and arranging function for the eddy-current test, a real time 3-D graphic simulation function which offers remote reality to operators and so on. The image information acquired from the camera attached to the end-effecter is used to calibrate the end-effecter pose error and the time-delayed control algorithm is applied to calculate the optimal PID gain of the position controller. The developed robotic system has been tested in the Ulchin NPP type steam generator mockup in a laboratory.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.1374-1381
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• 2022

Under the influence of nuclear radiation, the reliability of steam generators (SGs) is an important factor in the efficiency and safety of nuclear power plant (NPP) reactors. Motion planning that remotely manipulates an SG mobile tube-inspection robot to inspect SG heat transfer tubes is the mainstream trend of NPP robot development. To achieve motion planning, conditional traversal is usually used for base position optimization, and then the A^* algorithm is used for path planning. However, the proposed approach requires considerable processing time and has a single expansion during path planning and plan paths with many turns, which decreases the working speed of the robot. Therefore, to reduce the calculation time and improve the efficiency of motion planning, modifications such as the matrix method, improved parent node, turning cost, and improved expanded node were proposed in this study. We also present a comprehensive evaluation index to evaluate the performance of the improved algorithm. We validated the efficiency of the proposed method by planning on a tube sheet with square-type tube arrays and experimenting with Model SG.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.25-31
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• 2009

Steam Generator(SG) tube is an important component of Nuclear Power Plant(NPP), which comprises of the pressure boundary of primary system. The integrity of SG tube has been confirmed by the eddy current test every outage. In Korea, Bobbin probe and MRPC probe have been generally used for the eddy current test. Meanwhile the usage of Array probe has gradually increased in U.S., Japan and other countries. In this study, we investigated the defect detection capability of the Array probe through its preliminary application to SG tube inspection. The Array probe has the equivalent capability in the defect detection and sizing as the conventional methods. Thus it is desirable that the Array probe is generally applied to SG tube inspection in the domestic NPPs.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.236-241
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• 1996

This paper presents a new eddy current testing system for inspecting tubes of steam generator in nuclear power plant. The proposed system adopted embedded expert system concept to automate tasks of the inspection such as inspection planning and flaw signal interpretation, and integrated all the tasks into a client/server type computing architecture using database management system. Therefore, human factor errors occurred during inspection could be minimized and the inspection data could be transferred in real-time. As a result, we can increase the level of inspection confidence and the productivity of a personal inspector. A prototype of the proposed system has been developed for 5 years and the test operation has been performed in domestic nuclear power plants.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.38-40
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• 2006

Nuclear power plants are urged to reduce operating and maintaining costs to remain competitive as well as to increase the safety preventing the radioactive material to the atmosphere. To reduce the cost and to increase the safety, the inspection of balance-of-plant heat exchanger becomes important. However, there are some problems for plugging the heat exchanger tubes since the criterion and its basis are not clearly described. The codes and standards related to show the tube plugging criteria may not exist currently. In this paper, a method to establish the tube plugging criteria of BOP heat exchangers is introduced and the tube plugging criteria for the non-regenerative heat exchanger in the steam generator blow-down system of nuclear power plant. This method relies on the similar method used to establish the plugging criteria for the steam generator tubes.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.772-777
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• 2003

A vision-based tool position estimation system for the inspection and maintenance manipulator working inside the steam generator bowl of nuclear power plants can help human operators ensure that the inspection probe or plug are inserted to the targeted tube. Some previous research proposed a simplified tube position verification system that counts the tubes passed through during the motion and displays only the position of the tool. In this paper, by using a general camera calibration approach, tool orientation is also estimated. In order to reduce the computation time and avoid the parameter bias problem in an ellipse fitting, a small number of edge points are collected around the large section of the ellipse boundary. Experiment results show that the camera calibration parameters, detected ellipses, and estimated tool position are appropriate.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1991.07a
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• pp.730-733
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• 1991

The inspection for steam generator tubes of nuclear power plants is performed by eddy current test method. In the current, human experts should check enormous amounts of eddy current(EC) signals to find abnormal ones on the computer screen. This method could cause a few problems. The purpose of this paper is to develop an expert system which can automatically evaluate EC signals of steam generator tubes. Since this expert system can replace or help human experts, the reliability in EC signal evaluation can be improved, and the required man-power can be reduced. Additionally, application of this system can shorten the overhaul period, contribute to a safe operation of the nuclear power plant.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.63-68
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• 2013

Some essential components in nuclear power plants are periodically inspected using non-destructive examinations, for example ultrasonic, eddy current and radiographic examinations, in order to determine their integrity. These components include nuclear power plant items such as vessels, containments, piping systems, pumps, valves, tubes and core support structure. Steam generator tubes have an important safety role because they constitute one of the primary barriers between the radioactive and non-radioactive sides of the nuclear power plant. There is potential that if a tube bursts while a plant is operating, radioactivity from the primary coolant system could escape directly to the atmosphere. Therefore, in-service inspections are critical in maintaining steam generator tube integrity. In general, the eddy current testing is widely used for the inspection of steam generator tubes due to its high inspection speed and flaw detectability on non-magnetic tubes. However, it is not easy to analyze correctly eddy current signals because they are influenced by many factors. Therefore, the performance of eddy current data analysts for steam generator tubing should be demonstrated comprehensively. In Korea, the performance of steam generator tubing analysts has been demonstrated using the Qualified Data Analyst program. This paper describes the performance demonstration program for steam generator tubing analysts and its implementation results in Korea. The pass rate of domestic analysts for this program was 71.4%.