• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.368-375
• /
• 2013

Failure of small bore piping welds is a recurring problem at nuclear power plants. And the socket weld cracking in small bore piping has caused unplanned plant shutdowns for repair and high economic impact on the plants. Consequently, early crack detection, including the detection of manufacturing defects, is of the utmost importance. Until now, the surface inspection methods has been applied according to ASME Section XI requirements. But the ultrasonic inspection as a volumetric method is also applying to enforce the inspection requirement. However, the conventional manual ultrasonic inspection techniques are used to detect service induced fatigue cracks. And there was uncertainty on manual ultrasonic inspection because of limited access to the welds and difficulties with contact between the ultrasonic probe and the OD(outer diameter) surface of small bore piping. In this study, phased array ultrasonic inspection technique is applied to increase inspection speed and reliability. To achieve this object, the 3.5 MHz phased array ultrasonic transducer are designed and fabricated. The manually encoded scanner was also developed to enhance contact conditions and maintain constant signal quality. Additionally inspection system is configured and inspection procedure is developed.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
• /
• v.6 no.1
• /
• pp.16-22
• /
• 2010

Cast austenitic stainless steel(CASS) is used in the primary cooling piping system of nuclear power plant for it's relative low cost, corrosion resistance and easy of welding. However, the coarse-grain structure of cast austenitic stainless steel can strongly affect the inspectability of ultrasonic testing. The major problems encountered during inspection are beam skewing, high attenuation and high background noise of CASS component. So far, the best inspection performance involving CASS components have been achieved using low frequency TRL(Transmitter/Receiver side-by-side L wave) angle beam probe. But TRL technique could not detect shallow defect and it contains an uncertainty for sizing capability. Currently, most of researchers are studying to overcome these challenge issue. In this study, low-frequency phased array TRL technique used to detect and sizing the flaws in CF8A cast austenitic stainless steel.As conclusion, we could detect and size not only axial flaw but also circumferential flaw using low frequency phased array technique.

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

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.361-367
• /
• 2013

Many of the nuclear power plant pipe is used in high temperature and high pressure environment. Wall thinning frequently caused by the corrosion. These wall thinning in pipe is expected gradually increase as nuclear power become superannuated. Therefore there is need to evaluate wall thinning in pipe and corrosion defect by non-destructive method to prevent the accident of the nuclear power facility due to pipe corrosion. Especially for real-time assessment of the wall thinning that occurs in nuclear power plant pipe, the laser ultrasonic technology can be measured even in hard-to-reach areas, beyond the limits of earlier existing contact methods. In this study, the optical method using laser was applied for non-destructive and non-contact evaluation. Ultrasonic signals was acquired through generating ultrasonic by pulse laser and using laser interferometer. First the ultrasonic signal was detected in no wall thinning in pipe, then a longitudinal wave velocity was measured inside of pipe. Artificial wall thinning specimen compared to 20, 30, 40 and 50% of thickness of the pipe was produced and the longitudinal wave velocity was measured. It was possible to evaluate quantitatively the wall thinning area(internal defect depth) cause it was able to calculate the thickness of each specimen using measured longitudinal wave velocity.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
• /
• 2005.05a
• /
• pp.817-818
• /
• 2005

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
• /
• 2008.05a
• /
• pp.556-559
• /
• 2008

In this study, an automated ultrasonic testing system and post signal and image processing techniques are developed in order to construct ultrasonic flaw images in weldments. The automated ultrasonic testing system developed in the present study adopted an 8 channel pulser/receiver-ADC unit and a 2 axis motion driving unit and the post signal and image processing algorithms are built into the system program of the automated ultrasonic testing system.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
• /
• v.18 no.6
• /
• pp.675-682
• /
• 2009

Sludge minimization from wastewater treatment plant is becoming more important to save disposal costs and to contribute to sustainable development. For the reduction of sludge production, solubilization and dewaterability of sludge are important factors in sludge processing. Ultrasonic treatment has been used to enhance sludge solubility and dewaterability with anaerobic digestion sludge, primary sludge, and activated sludge. At the ultrasonic power of 0.2 kW/L for 1 hour, anaerobic sludge and activated sludge showed higher solubilization efficiency than the primary sludge in terms of COD, proteins, and suspended solids. Ultrasonic treatment decreased sludge dewaterability and sludge settling characteristics up to 720 kJ/L of ultrasonic energy. In conclusion, ultrasonic treatment was effective for sludge solubilization but it deteriorate dewaterability (specific resistance) and settling characteristics (SVI) of sludge at the experimental conditions.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
• /
• v.13 no.10
• /
• pp.651-657
• /
• 2003

Ultrasonic microscope has been used to detect the defects on surface or inner solid. Conventionally, it has used at a single operating frequency. The resolution and quality of the measured images are determined by a characteristic of the transducer of the ultrasonic microscope. The conventional ultrasonic microscope has been used envelope detector to detect the amplitude of reflected signal, but the changes in amplitude is not sensitive enough for specimen with microstructure that in phase. In this paper, we have studied multi-frequency depth resolution enhancement with ultrasonic reflection microscope for the reflectors of a stainless steel reference specimen and a reference calibration block to be used as the material in nuclear power plants for ISI, PSI. Increased depth resolution can be obtained by taking two, three-dimensional images at more that one frequency and numerically combining the results. As results of the experiment, we could get enhanced images with the rate of contrast in proportion and high quality signal distribution for the image to the changing rate of depth for the reflectors of the two kinds of specimens.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
• /
• v.16 no.5
• /
• pp.8-14
• /
• 2008

For nondestructive inspection of electron beam (EB) welding part in automotive power transmission assembly, a pulse-echo ultrasonic testing apparatus in water immersion has been applied using the ultrasonic waves with a frequency of 10MHz. However various problems have appeared during the ultrasonic inspection, which led to some significant mistakes in automatic quality evaluation of the welding parts. Experimental study showed that the state of water couplant medium containing some amount of contaminants, rusts and anti-corrosion agents had considerable influences on the reduction of ultrasonic amplitudes during wave propagation. The amplitude reduction depending on the coupling medium state could bring about some mis-diagnoses for defects in the welding parts. The results proposed that for a reliable inspection of defects in welds the state of water medium should be kept in about 15 volume fractions (vol.%) of anti-corrosion agents and in minimized contaminants.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.67-73
• /
• 2004

Various researches have been undertaken to develope a method of enhancing consolidation. This study investigated the effect of ultrasonic energy on consolidation through a series of laboratory experiments. The tests were conducted using a specially designed and fabricated equipment which can apply ultrasonic energy on a soil sample directly during a consolidometer test. Clay specimens were prepared from slurry using a centrifuge facility, and test conditions were varied depending on ultrasonic power and treatment time. The results of the study show that the effect of ultrasonic energy on consolidation is significant. The degree of significance varies with the test conditions. It could be concluded that the study showed potential application of ultrasound to reduce consolidation time.