• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.37-42
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• 2005

The non-destructive Inspection of the fillet weldment has difficulties due to its geometrical complexity and uneasy access. The surface shear horizontal wave (SH-wave), however, has been successfully applied to the detection of cracks on the surface and sub-surface of the filet weldment heel part. The conventional ultrasonic inspection using the surface SH-wave is usually a contact method using piezoelectric transducer. Thus, it is not suitable for a field application because the reliability and repeatability of inspection are significantly affected by test conditions such as couplant, contact pressure and pre-process. In order to overcome this problem, a non-contact SH-wave inspection method using EMAT is propose. The experimental results with this non-contact method are compared with those with a conventional ultrasonic method in fillet weldment with slit type defects. It is shown that the non-contact inspection technique requires simple procedure and less time in the fillet weldment inspection.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.890-898
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• 2018

Nondestructive inspection (NDI) is an integral part of structural integrity analyses of dry storage casks that house spent nuclear fuel. One significant concern for the structural integrity is stress corrosion cracking in the heat-affected zone of welds in the stainless steel canister that confines the spent fuel. In situ NDI methodology for detection of stress corrosion cracking is investigated, where the inspection uses a delivery robot because of the presence of the harsh environment and geometric constrains inside the cask protecting the canister. Shear horizontal (SH) guided waves that are sensitive to cracks oriented either perpendicular or parallel to the wave vector are used to locate welds and to detect cracks. SH waves are excited and received by electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) using noncontact ultrasonic transduction and pulse-echo mode. A laboratory-scale canister mock-up is fabricated and inspected using the proposed methodology to evaluate the ability of EMATs to excite and receive SH waves and to locate welds. The EMAT's capability to detect notches from various distances is evaluated on a plate containing 25%-through-thickness surface-breaking notches. Based on the results of the distances at which notch reflections are detectable, NDI coverage for spent nuclear fuel storage canisters is determined.