• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.145-152
• /
• 2009

Currently almost all in-service-inspection techniques, applied in domestic nuclear power plants, are partial to field inspection technique. These kinds of techniques are related to managing nuclear power plants by the operation of foreign-produced inspection devices. There have been so many needsfor development of native in-service-inspection device because there is no native diagnosis device for nuclear power plant inspection yet in Korea. In this research, we developed several core techniques to make an automated ultrasonic pipe inspection system for nuclear power plants. A high performance multi-channel ultrasonic pulser/receiver module, an A/D converter module and a digital main CPU module were developed and the performance of the developed modules was verified. The S/N ratio, noise level and signal acquisition performance of the developed modules showed proper level as we designed in the beginning.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
• /
• v.41 no.3
• /
• pp.231-240
• /
• 2018

Automated breast ultrasound (ABUS) equipment is a new innovative technique for 3D automatic breast scanning, but limited for the examination in the concave axillary region. The purpose of this study was to determine feasible candidate materials for the ultrasonic wave propagation media in ABUS, enabling the evaluation of the axillary region. Ultrasonography was performed using an ABUS system ($Invenia^{TM}ABUS$, GE, USA) on the ultrasound-specific phantom (UC-551M-0.5, ATS Laboratories, USA) covered by different candidate materials. The validity of feasible candidate materials was evaluated by image quality. Three independent radiological technologists, with more than 10 years of experience, visually assessed on the images. The inter-observer agreements according to the candidate materials were tested using Cronbach's alpha. Unenveloped solidified carrageenan can be a feasible material for the use of ABUS with excellent test reliability. Therefore, the coverage of the axillary region with carrageenan may be effective for ABUS which was originally developed for the convex anatomic structure as female breast.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.37-42
• /
• 2010

The stay cylinder weld at the steam generator of Korean Standard Nuclear Power Plants is safety class I component and is subjected to be inspected by the volumetric examination such as ultrasonic method. As accessibility of this area is limited due to the narrow space and high radiation, the existing manual inspection method involves various difficulties. Moreover operators may be exposed to internal contamination by contaminated dust during the surface buffing process to improve the inspection reliability of this area. Recently the new automatic inspection system for stay cylinder welds has been developed. The inspection system basically consists of a driving assembly, data acquisition device and signal processing units. The driving assembly is classified by 1) the scanner for inspecting and buffing the weld, 2) pillars for guiding the scanner and 3) the base frame for loading and supporting pillars. The scanner has 4 sensor modules to inspect in 4 refracted angles and 4 incident directions. These components can be inserted into the skirt of the stay cylinder through the manway hole and assembled easily by one-touch in the skirt. Data acquisition device and signal processing units developed in previous works are also newly upgraded for better processing of data analysis and evaluation. The system has been successfully demonstrated not only in the mock-up but also in the field. In this paper, newly developed inspection system for the stay cylinder weld of the steam generator is introduced and their field applications are discussed.