• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.9
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• pp.2119-2129
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• 2020

Flow-accelerated corrosion (FAC), liquid droplet impingement erosion (LDIE), cavitation and flashing can cause continuous wall-thinning in nuclear secondary pipes. In order to prevent pipe rupture events resulting from the wall-thinning, most NPPs (nuclear power plants) implement their management programs, which include periodic thickness inspection using UT (ultrasonic test). Meanwhile, it is well known in field experiences that the thickness measurement errors (or deviations) are often comparable with the amount of thickness reduction. Because of these errors, it is difficult to estimate wall-thinning exactly whether the significant thinning has occurred in the inspected components or not. In the previous study, the authors presented an approximate estimation procedure as the first step for thickness measurement deviations at each inspected component and the statistical & quantitative characteristics of the measurement deviations using plant experience data. In this study, statistical significance was quantified for the current methods used for wall-thinning determination. Also, the authors proposed new estimation procedures for determining local wall-thinning to overcome the weakness of the current methods, in which the proposed procedure is based on analysis of variance (ANOVA) method using subgrouping of measured thinning values at all measurement grids. The new procedures were also quantified for their statistical significance. As the results, it is confirmed that the new methods have better estimation confidence than the methods having used until now.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.820-830
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• 2016

Pipe wall thinning by flow-accelerated corrosion and various types of erosion is a significant and costly damage phenomenon in secondary piping systems of nuclear power plants (NPPs). Most NPPs have management programs to ensure pipe integrity due to wall thinning that includes periodic measurements for pipe wall thicknesses using nondestructive evaluation techniques. Numerous measurements using ultrasonic tests (UTs; one of the nondestructive evaluation technologies) have been performed during scheduled outages in NPPs. Using the thickness measurement data, wall thinning rates of each component are determined conservatively according to several evaluation methods developed by the United States Electric Power Research Institute. However, little is known about the conservativeness or reliability of the evaluation methods because of a lack of understanding of the measurement error. In this study, quantitative models for UT thickness measurement deviations of nuclear pipes and fittings were developed as the first step for establishing an optimized thinning evaluation procedure considering measurement error. In order to understand the characteristics of UT thickness measurement errors of nuclear pipes and fittings, round robin test results, which were obtained by previous researchers under laboratory conditions, were analyzed. Then, based on a large dataset of actual plant data from four NPPs, a quantitative model for UT thickness measurement deviation is proposed for plant conditions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.90-95
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• 2014

Local wall thinning is a point of concern in almost all steel structures such as pipe lines covered with a thermal insulator made up of materials with low thermal conductivity(fiberglass or mineral wool); hence, Non Destructive Technique(NDT) methods that are capable of detecting the wall thinning and defects without removing the insulation are necessary. In this study we developed a Pulsed Eddy Current(PEC) system to detect the wall thinning of Ferro magnetic steel pipes covered with fiber glass thermal insulator and shielded with Aluminum plate. The developed system is capable of detecting the wall thickness change through an insulation of thickness 10cm and 0.4mm aluminum shielding. In order to confirm the thickness change due to wall thinning, two different sensors, a hall sensor and coil sensor were used as a detecting element. In both cases, the results show a very good change corresponding to the thickness change of the test specimen. During these experiments a carbon steel tube of diameter 210mm and a length of 620mm, which is covered with insulator of 95mm thickness was used. To simulate the wall thinning, the thickness of the tube is changed for a specified length such as 2.5mm, 5mm and 8 mm from the inner surface of the tube. A 0.4mm thick Aluminum plate was covered on the Test specimen to simulate the shielding of the insulated pipelines. For both hall sensor and coil detection methods Fast Fourier transform(FFT) was calculated using window approach and the results for the test specimen without Aluminum shielding were summarized which shows a clear identification of thickness change in the test specimen by comparing the magnitude spectra. The PEC system can detect the wall thinning under the 95 mm thickness insulation and 0.4 mm Al shielding, and the output signal showed linear relation with tube wall thickness.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.393-399
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• 1998

For minimizing wall thickness thinning of circular shells, a new stamping technology, the deep draw-ing process combined with ironing is approached and investigated. The design requirements for the deep drawing shells are to keep the optimum wall thickness with max. 10 percent thickness thinning of the initial blank thickness, to make uniform thickness strain distribution for the wall of circular shell and to improve the shape accuracy for the roundness and concentricity. In order to check the validity and effectiveness of proposed work, a sample process design is applied to a circular shell needed for a 4multi-stepped deep drawing. Through experiments, the variations of the thickness strain distribution in each drawing process are observed. Also a series of experiments are performed to investigate optimum process variables such as the geometry of tooling, radius and drawing rate. In particular, the advantage of current approach with ironing is shown in contrast to the conventional deep drawing process. From the results of proposed method, the optimum value of process variables are obtained, which contribute more uniform thickness strain distribution and better quality in the drawn product.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.57-60
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• 2016

Non Destructive Testing (NDT) methods that are capable of detecting the wall thinning and defects through insulation and cladding sheets are necessary. In this study we developed a Pulsed Eddy Current (PEC) system to detect wall thinning of ferro magnetic steel pipes covered with 95 mm thick fiber glass thermal insulator and shielded with aluminum plate of thickness 0.4 mm. In order to confirm the thickness change due to wall thinning, two different sensors, a hall sensor and a search coil sensor were used as a detecting element. In both the cases, the experimental data indicates a considerable change in the detected pulse corresponding to the change in sample thickness. The thickness of the tube was made to change such as 2.5 mm, 5 mm and 8 mm from the inner surface to simulate wall thinning. Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) was calculated using window approach and the results were summarized which shows a clear identification of thickness change in the test specimen by comparing the magnitude spectra.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.146-154
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• 2023

In nuclear power plants, ultrasonic test for pipe wall thickness measurement is used during periodic inspections to prevent pipe rupture due to pipe wall thinning. However, when measuring pipe wall thickness using ultrasonic test, a significant amount of measurement error occurs due to the on-site conditions of the nuclear power plant. If the maximum pipe wall thinning rate is decided by the measured pipe wall thickness containing a significant error, the pipe wall thinning rate data have significant uncertainty and systematic overestimation. This study proposes preprocessing of pipe wall thinning measurement data using support vector machine regression algorithm. By using support vector machine, pipe wall thinning measurement data can be smoothened and accordingly uncertainty and systematic overestimation of the estimated pipe wall thinning rate data can be reduced.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.1-8
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• 1999

Information representing the thickness of the original lines from the thinning results can be used efficiently in order to implement the automated vectorizing system. This paper proposes a preprocessing scheme of thinning which can show the information of the original lines' thickness from the thinning result. In the proposed scheme, the depth of each pixel constructing the lines was calculated, which was represented by the number of layers composed of neighboring pixels surrounding the original pixel. And then the original lines' thickness could be recognized through the depth information of the skeleton from the thinning results. We implemented the proposed scheme and experimented on a contour map. Using the depth information of the skeleton, we could easily distinguish each line of the contour either an intermediate or an index contour.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.17-24
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• 2008

Elbows with various shapes of local wall thinning were numerically analyzed by finite element method to get load-displacement curves and the maximum loads. Results were compared with the experimental data obtained by another study. Elastic-plastic analysis were carried out under the combined loading conditions of internal pressure and in-plane bending loads. Two types of bending loads were considered such as elbow opening mode and elbow closing mode. Also, two different wall thinning geometries were modeled. Wall thinning area located extrados or intrados of elbow inner surface was considered. Longitudinal and circumferential lengths of the thinning area and the thinned thickness were varied for analysis. The results showed that the maximum load of the wall-thinned elbow decreased with increasing of the circumferential thinning length and the thinned thickness in both of extrados and intrados thinning locations in both loading types. The maximum load obtained by the analysis were in good agreement with the experimentally measured maximum load with the same wall thinning type and dimensions. This supports accuracy of the analysis results obtained in this study.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.46-52
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• 2019

This work proposes a noncontact ultrasonic transducer for detecting wall-thinning of containment liner plates of nuclear power plants by measuring their thickness without physical contact. Because the containment liner plate is designed to prevent atmospheric leakage of radioactive substances under severe nuclear accident, its wall-thinning inspection is important for safety of nuclear power plants. Wall-thinning investigation of containment liner plates have been carried out by measuring their thickness with contact-type ultrasonic thickness gauge by inspectors and needs a lot of time and cost. As an alternative, an electromagnetic acoustic transducer measuring precisely thickness of containment liner plates without any physical contact or couplant was suggested in this research. A transducer generating and measuring shear ultrasonic waves in thickness direction was designed and wave field produced by the transducer was analyzed to verify the design. The working performance of the suggested transducer was tested with carbon steel plate specimens with various thicknesses. The test result shows that the proposed transducer can measure thickness of the specimens precisely without any couplant and implies that swift scanning of wall-thinning of containment liner plates will be possible with the proposed transducer.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.298-301
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• 2012

In order to know the effect of surface irregularity in the detection of local wall thinning of pipeline using pulsed eddy current (PEC), the lift-off effects on PEC signal have been investigated. Three kinds of parameters in the PEC signal, which is "peak amplitude", "time to peak amplitude" and "time to zero crossing" are analyzed to separate the lift-off effects in the PEC signal. The distance from sensor to the bottom of sample which is the total thickness of combined insulator and sample is kept constant. The magnitude of the differential peak amplitude is increased with increasing sample thickness, the time to peak amplitude is increased with increasing the sample thickness. To determine the effect of lift-off, a number of balanced transient responses combining wall thinning locations and lift-off distances were plotted.