Abstract
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.
