• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.283-285
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• 2006

Non Destructive Examination for welds is one of the most important processes to ensure the integrity of facilities of Nuclear power plants. An automated ultrasonic testing program is developed for welding inspection. A test block with side EDM notch is inspected with this program. This paper shows that the developed automated ultrasonic testing program is quite effective.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.60-68
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• 1991

The weld quality of end cap welds in Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) Fuel is extremely important for the fuel performance in the nuclear reactor. The quality of resistance upset welds is currently evaluated mainly by the metallographic examination although it reveals only two weld cross-sections in a circumference welds. This investigation was, firstly, carried out to determine whether the ultrasonic examination would be applied to detect weld defects in the end cap welds and, secondly, to measure the mechanical strength of upset butt welds as a function of phase shift percentage. The major results obtained in this study are as follows: 1. The weld current and amount of upset shrinkage linearly increased with increasing the phase shift percentage. 2. Above the phase shift 55%, the defects in the welds were completely eliminated with increasing the phase of sound weld was over the thickness of cladding tube. 3. The ultrasonic testing well detected such defects in the end cap welds as upset external crack, upset split, corner crack and irregular weld flash comparing with the results of metallography. 4. The micro-fissure in the corner of the end cap welds was reliably detected by ultrasonic testing. 5. The mechanical strength in the welds increased with increasing phase shift percentage but the fracture did't occur in the welds above 55%.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.378-383
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• 2004

The Korean Performance Demonstration(KPD) System for the ultrasonic testing personnel, equipments and procedures applicable to the Class 1 and 2 piping examination for nuclear power plant in Korea has been established. A round robin test was conducted in order to compare the examination results by the method of Performance Demonstration(PD) with the traditional dB-drop method. The round robin test shows that the reliability of the PD method is better than that of the dB-drop method. As a result, adoption of the PD method to the in-service inspection of the nuclear power plants will improve the reliability of the ultrasonic test results.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.536-542
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• 2011

Dissimilar metal welds in nuclear power plant are known as very susceptible to PWSCC flaws, and periodically inspected by the qualified inspector and qualified procedure during in-service inspection period. According to field survey data, the majority of their DMWs are located on tapered nozzle or adjacent to a tapered component. These types of configurations restrict examination access and also limit examination volume coverage. Additionally, circumferential scan for axially oriented flaw is very difficult to detect located on tapered surface because the transducer can't receive flaw response from reflector for miss-orientation. To overcome this miss-orientation, it is necessary adapt skewed ultrasonic transducer accomodate tapered surface. The skewed refracted longitudinal ultrasonic transducer designed by modeling and manufactured from the modelling result for axial flaw detection. Experimental results showed that the skewed refracted longitudinal ultrasonic transducer get higher flaw response than non-skewed refracted longitudinal ultrasonic transducer.

• International Journal of Reliability and Applications
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.25-36
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• 2004

Ultrasonic inspection system consist of the examination procedures, equipment, and operators. The reliability of nondestructive testing is influenced by the inspection environment, materials and types of defect. It is very difficult to estimate the reliability of NDT due to the various factors. Piping inspection round robin was conducted to quantify the capability of ultrasonic inspection during in-service. In this study, the models for predicting the ultrasonic NDE reliability by logistic model and linear regression model are discussed. The utility of the NDT reliability assessment is verified by the analysis of the data from round robin test with these models.

• Journal of Welding and Joining
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.40-48
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• 2001

An ultrasonic test method, as a nondestructive test is applied to ensure the clad interface quality assessment. According to the reference codes and standards, not only korea Industrial Standard(KS) but also American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Standard, ultrasonic examination procedures use the pulse-echo, A-scan, back reflection signal drop method and/or side drilled reference hole used to establish the acceptance criteria of clad material test. But the variety of bonding materials and sizes makes it difficult to produce the reference blocks, or thus the criteria. In order to overcome these practical difficulties, new ultrasonic testing criterion is suggested. In this new method, the theoretical interface reflection signal amplitude level is calculated and suggested as an acceptance criteria with the back reflection signal set to 100% FSH(Full Screen Height) which is based on acoustic impedance mismatch at the clad interface for the explosive clad ultrasonic inspection. Applicability of suggested criterion, for the explosive clad Fe-Naval Brass with different bonding quality is confirmed to the pre-existed KS and ASTM specifications and verified by using SEM (Seanning Electron Microscope) micrograph. The results obtained by the suggested method is more conservative than the results according to the KS B 0234 and ASTM A 578 specifications The suggested method could be applicable to any other combination of explosive clad ultrasonic inspection.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.52-60
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• 2015

Nuclear power plant contain many dissimilar metal welds that connect carbon steel components with stainless steel pipes using alloy600 welding materials. Primary water stress corrosion cracks at dissimilar metal welds have been continuously reported around the world. In periodic integrity evaluations, dissimilar metal welds are examined using a generic ultrasonic testing procedure, KPD-UT-10. In this procedure, the gap between the probe and examination surface is limited to 1/32 inch (0.8mm). It is not easy to test some dissimilar metal welds in Korean plants applying ordinary technology because of their tapered shapes and irregular surface conditions. This paper introduces a method for applying a flexible phased array technology to improve the reliability of ultrasonic testing results for various shapes and surface conditions. The artificial flaws in specimens with irregular surfaces were completely detected using the flexible phased array ultrasonic technology. Therefore, it can be said that the technology is applicable to field examination.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.44-50
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• 2014

There were many flaw issues of reactor vessel head penetration in USA fleets. USNRC issued 10CFR50.55a to implement reactor vessel head penetration ultrasonic examination performance demonstration(PD) in US for enhancement of inspection reliability. After September 2009, all US utilities inspected their RVHP with PD qualified system. Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Company(KHNP) have developed reactor vessel head penetration performance demonstration system for ultrasonic test to apply for pressurized light-water reactor power plants in accordance with 10CFR50.55a since September 2011. RVHP configuration surveying and analysis, code requirement analysis, and performance demonstration specimen design were performed up to this day. Fingerprinting of manufactured specimen, development of test data management program, development of operation procedure, input of flawed data, and development of final report will be performed for the next step. This paper describes the development status of the performance demonstration system for reactor vessel head penetration ultrasonic examination in Korea.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.226-231
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• 2007

This paper describes a development of ultrasonic examination analysis software to analyze steam generator of nuclear power plant. The developed software includes classical analysis method such as A, B, C and D-scan images. This software provides the information of shape, depth, size and position of flaws. To do such, we obtain raw data from specimens and/or real pipeline of power plants and, modify the obtained ultrasonic 1-dimensional data according to prepared software design schedule. The developed analysis software is applied to specimens containing various flaws with known dimensions. The results of applications showed that the developed software provided accurate and enhanced images of flaws on various specimens.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.20-24
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• 2015

During refueling Outage, In-service inspections(ISIs) for the Nuclear Power Plant components are mandatory requirement in accordance with ASME Code Sec. XI. Especially, in current ultrasonic testing is one of the most important NDT techniques that are used for volumetric examination methods for nuclear power plant components, and accurate sizing of flaw indication by UT is essential to assure the integrity of the components. However, ASME code specifies minimum requirement for vessel examination procedure, and so far many different flaw sizing approaches have been tried to apply. Through the Round Robin Test(RRT), the accuracy of ultrasonic flaw sizing using DAC techniques was measured with the mock-ups simulating typical pressure vessel welds. These mock-ups contain artificially introduced flaws of known size and location. This paper shows experimental comparison data on the accuracy of techniques using such as 6dB drop, 50%DAC, 20%DAC and 20%DAC with beam spread correction, and also shows that diverse DAC techniques can be effectively applied to the assessment of the flaw sizing for pressure vessel welds in the stage of welding and fabrication.