• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.54 no.9
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• pp.556-558
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• 2005

The effect of high irradiation on inspection systems in a nuclear power plant can be severe, especially to electronic components such as control hoards. The effect may lead to a critical malfunction or trouble to a underwater robot for inspection and maintenance of nuclear reactor. However, if information on the total accumulated dose on the sensitive parts of the robot is available, a prediction of robot's behavior in radiation environments becomes possible. To know how much radiation the robot has encountered, a dosimeter to measure the total accumulated dose is necessary. This paper describes the development effort of a dual radiation monitoring system using a SiC diode as a dose-rate meter and a p-type power MOSFET as a dose meter. This attempt using two sensors which detect same radiation improves reliability and stability at high intensity radiation detection in nuclear facilities. It uses the concept of diversity and redundancy.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.1153-1160
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• 2022

The application of video processing techniques are useful for the safety of nuclear power plants by tracking the people online on video to estimate the dose received by staff during work in nuclear plants. Nuclear reactors remotely visually controlled to evaluate the plant's condition using video processing techniques. Internal reactor components should be frequently inspected but in current scenario however involves human technicians, who review inspection videos and identify the costly, time-consuming and subjective cracks on metallic surfaces of underwater components. In case, if any frame of the inspection video degraded/corrupted/missed due to noise or any other factor, then it may cause serious safety issue. The problem of missing/degraded/corrupted video frame estimation is a challenging problem till date. In this paper a systematic literature review on video processing techniques is carried out, to perform their suitability analysis for NPP applications. The limitation of existing approaches are also identified along with a roadmap to overcome these limitations.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.62-69
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• 2014

A huge number of carbon steel piping components installed in the secondary system of nuclear power plants are exposed to aging mechanisms such as FAC (Flow-Accelerated Corrosion), Cavitation, Flashing, and LDIE (Liquid Droplet Impingement Erosion). Those aging mechanisms can lead to thinning of the piping components. To manage the wall thinning degradation, most of utilities in the world predict the wall thinning rate based on the computational program such as CHECWORKS, COMSY, and BRT-CICERO, evaluate the UT (Ultrasonic Test) data, and determine next inspection timing, repair or replacement, if needed. There are several evaluation methods, such as band, blanket, and strip methods, commonly used for determining the wear of piping components from single UT inspection data. It has been identified that those single UT evaluation methods not only do not consider the manufacturing features of pipes, but also may exclude the data of the most thinned point when determining the representative wear rate of piping components. This paper describes a newly developed single UT evaluation method, E-Cross method, for solving above problems and introduces application examples for several pipes and elbows. It was identified that the E-Cross method using the length and width of UT data excluded the most thinned points appropriate as the single UT evaluation method for thinned piping components.

• Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.629-636
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• 2003

This paper introduces the developed geometry PIG (Pipeline Inspection Gauge), one of several ILI (In-Line Inspection) tools, which provide a full picture of the pipeline from only single pass, and has compact size of the electronic device with not only low power consumption but also rapid response of sensors such as calipers, IMU and odometer. This tool is equipped with the several sensor systems. Caliper sensors measure the pipeline internal diameter, ovality and dent size and shape with high accuracy. The IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) measures the precise trajectory of the PIG during its traverse of the pipeline. The IMU also provide three-dimensional coordination in space from measurement of inertial acceleration and angular rate. Three odometers mounted on the PIG body provide the distance moved along the line and instantaneous velocity during the PIG run. The datum measured by the sensor systems are stored in on-board solid state memory and magnetic tape devices. There is an electromagnetic transmitter at the back end of the tool, the transmitter enables the inspection operators to keep tracking the tool while it travels through the pipeline. An experiment was fulfilled in pull-rig facility and was adopted from Incheon LT (LNG Terminal) to Namdong GS (Governor Station) line, 13 km length.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.67 no.6
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• pp.773-781
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• 2018

In recent years, a study of power-line inspection using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has been actively conducted. However, relevant studies have been conducting power-line inspection with an UAV operated by manual control, and they have developed just power-line detection algorithm on aerial images. To overcome limitations of existing research, we propose a drone-based power-line tracking system in this paper. The main contributions of this paper are to operate developed system under configured environment and to develop a power-line detection algorithm in real-time. Developed system is composed of the power-line detection and the image-based tracking control. To detect a power-line in real-time, a region of interest (ROI) image is extracted. Furthermore, clustering algorithm is used in order to discriminate the power-line from background. Finally, the power-line is detected by using the Hough transform, and a center position and a tilt angle are estimated by using the Kalman filter to control a drone smoothly. We design a position controller and an attitude controller for image-based tracking control, and both controllers are designed based on the proportional-derivative (PD) control method. The interaction between the position controller and the attitude controller makes the drone track the power-line. Several experiments were carried out in environments where conditions are similar to actual environments, which demonstrates the superiority of the developed system.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.174-183
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• 1997

Turbine rotor disc consists of disc, bore, keyway, hub, and rim in which the typical defects are located. And these part of disc has very complicated geometry, therefore proper transducer selection, wedge design, fabrication, classification and evaluation of the signal identification are required. In this research, test block with the artificial flaws at keyway and boresurface parts have been used in order to establish the ultrasonic inspection technique for flaw detectability on disc. The analysis of the signals from the test blocks was performed. The wedges were designed according to the curvature from the discs. All the ultrasonic signals were collected and identified for evaluation. The ultrasonic inspection technique for the flaw-detection was established from this research. And it is proved that the result of this research can be applicable in the field inspection.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.295-301
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• 2010

Flow accelerated corrosion(FAC) of carbon steel pipes in nuclear power plants has been known as one of the major degradation mechanisms. It could have bad influence on the plant reliability and safety. Also detection of FAC is a significant cost to the nuclear power plant because of the need to remove and replace insulation. Recently, the interest of the guided wave testing(GWT) has grown because it allows long range inspection without removing insulation of the pipe except at the probe position. If GWT can be applied to detection of FAC damages, it will can significantly reduce the cost for the inspection of the pipes. The objective of this study was to determine the capability of GWT to identify location of FAC damages. In this paper, three kinds of techniques were used to measure the amplitude ratio between the first and the second welds at the elbow area of mock-ups that contain real FAC damages. As a result, optimal inspection technique and minimum detectability to detect FAC damages drew a conclusion.

• Journal of Power System Engineering
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.18-23
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• 2011

Image processing has provided powerful techniques to extract from the acoustic signals the desired information on evaluation for leakage existence, leakage rate, and searching for leakage location, etc. The imagery NDE data available can add additional and significant dimension in nondestructive evaluation(NDE) information and thus for exploiting in applications. To extract such information the use of advanced image processing techniques is much needed. In recent years, there has been much increased use of acoustic signal image processing techniques in acoustic NDE. This approach will increase the efficiency of inspection procedures and reduce inspection time. In this paper we are concerned only with This paper is concerned mainly with the use of advanced image processing techniques in valve leakage detection and advanced image restoration and enhancement methods, which attempt to evaluate promptly by a visualization method the acoustic sources while detecting the valve leakage.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.225-234
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• 2014

Wall-thinned defects caused by accelerated corrosion due to fluid flow in the inner pipe appear in many structures of the secondary systems in nuclear power plants (NPPs) and are a major factor in degrading the integrity of pipes. Wall-thinned defects need to be managed not only when the NPP is under maintenance but also when the NPP is in normal operation. To this end, a test technique was developed in this study to detect such wall-thinned defects based on the temperature difference on the surface of a hot pipe using infrared (IR) thermography and a cooling device. Finite element analysis (FEA) was conducted to examine the tendency and experimental conditions for the cooling experiment. Based on the FEA results, the equipment was configured before the cooling experiment was conducted. The IR camera was then used to detect defects in the inner pipe of the pipe specimen that had artificially induced defects. The IR thermography developed in this study is expected to help resolve the issues related to the limitations of non-destructive inspection techniques that are currently conducted for NPP secondary systems and is expected to be very useful on the NPPs site.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.32-37
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• 2018

The power plants use turbine output control devices to supply or shut off steam to high pressure and low-pressure steam turbines connected to generators. This turbine output control device is driven by a hydraulic servo actuator. The gas flows into the hydraulic servo actuator during periodic inspection or normal operation, and the resulting adiabatic compression of the gas raises the internal temperature of the actuator to $500^{\circ}C$. This temperature increase causes the seals to burn and show wear and tear, resulting in failure. In this study, an air vent valve was installed to allow gas inside the hydraulic servo actuator to flow large quantities of air at the beginning of the operation and after the periodic inspection. Gas was passed through for only minute flow during normal operation of the power plant. By applying the air vent valve, it improves the reliability of the hydraulic servo actuator by discharge the gas appropriately to improve the life of the seal.