TY - CONF A1 - Kreutzbruck, Marc A1 - Prager, Jens A1 - Boehm, Rainer A1 - Kitze, Jessica A1 - Brekow, Gerhard T1 - Progress in acoustical defect sizing NDT methods for the inspection of power-plant components T2 - 18th WCNDT - World conference on nondestructive testing (Proceedings) N2 - The demand of improved NDT methods with proper visualization and sizing capabilities is a persistent trend in maintenance and manufacturing quality inspection. Especially when dealing with high quality standards in conjunction with safety-critical components in the sector of energy and transportation quantitative NDT techniques are vital to provide reliable quality control systems and a corresponding deeper insight into the component structure for a further fracture-mechanical estimation. The paper thus focuses the progress of the defect sizing capabilities of modern Ultrasonic Testing (UT). In Ultrasonic Testing the SAFT-algorithm (Synthetic Aperture Focusing Technique) currently experiences a renaissance. The method is based on combining the data of different transducer positions with their corresponding varied propagating time and it is currently applied in several industrial applications. SAFT enhances the SNR and the spatial resolution and is thus a valuable tool when it comes to improved defect detection and sizing. A tomographic-like data mapping is illustrated on several examples, where adapted phased array systems were used for the inspection of turbine components and also for a cladded mock-up of a nuclear reactor pressure vessel. In a statistical investigation we also performed a comparison with other defect sizing methods like TOFD (Time of flight diffraction). T2 - 18th WCNDT - World conference on nondestructive testing CY - Durban, South Africa DA - 2012-04-16 KW - SAFT KW - TOFD KW - Cracks KW - Phased Array PY - 2012 SN - 978-0-620-52872-6 SP - 1 EP - 8 (Paper 497) AN - OPUS4-26350 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -