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Austenitic welds and dissimilar welds are extensively used in primary circuit pipes and pressure vessels in nuclear power plants, chemical industries and fossil fuelled power plants because of their high fracture toughness, resistance to corrosion and creep at elevated temperatures. However, cracks may initiate in these weld materials during fabrication process or stress operations in service. Thus, it is very important to evaluate the structural integrity of these materials using highly reliable non- destructive testing (NDT) methods. Ultrasonic non-destructive inspection of austenitic welds and dissimilar weld components is complicated because of anisotropic columnar grain structure leading to beam splitting and beam deflection. Simulation tools play an important role in developing advanced reliable ultrasonic testing (UT) techniques and optimizing experimental parameters for inspection of austenitic welds and dissimilar weld components. The main aim of the thesis is to develop a 3D ray tracing model for quantitative evaluation of ultrasonic wave propagation in an inhomogeneous anisotropic austeniticweld material. Inhomogenity in the anisotropic weld material is represented by discretizing into several homogeneous layers. According to ray tracing model, ultrasonic ray paths are traced during its energy propagation through various discretized layers of the material and at each interface the problem of reflection and transmission is solved. The influence of anisotropy on ultrasonic reflection and transmission behaviour in an anisotropic austenitic weld material are quantitatively analyzed in three dimensions. Theultrasonic beam directivity in columnar grained austenitic steel material is determined three dimensionally using Lamb’s reciprocity theorem. The developed ray tracing model evaluates the transducer excited ultrasonic fields accurately by taking into account the directivity of the transducer, divergence of the ray bundle, density of rays and phase relations as well as transmission coefficients. The ray tracing model is able to determine the ultrasonic wave fields generated by a point source as well as finite dimension array transducers.
In this contribution a 3D ray tracing model for ultrasonic
field evaluation in inhomogeneous anisotropic materials
such as austenitic welds is presented. The inhomogenity of
austenitic weld material is represented as several
homogeneous layers. The general problem of energy
reflection and transmission at the boundaries of the layers
are solved resulting 3D amplitude and energy reflection and
transmission coefficients. The directivity factor for the ray in
general arbitrary oriented austenitic weld material (including
lay back orientation) is determined based on Lambs
reciprocity theorem. The transducer excited ultrasonic fields
are accurately evaluated by employing ray directivity factor,
transmission coefficients, divergence of the ray bundle and
density of rays. Finally, the comparison between theoretical
and experimental results will be described.
Ultrasonic investigation of inhomogeneous anisotropic materials such as austenitic welds is complicated because its columnar grain structure leads to curved energy paths, beam splitting and asymmetrical beam profiles. A ray tracing model has potential advantage in analyzing the ultrasonic sound field propagation and there with optimizing the inspection parameters. In this contribution we present a 2D ray tracing model to predict energy ray paths, ray amplitudes and travel times for the three wave modes quasi longitudinal, quasi shear vertical, and shear horizontal waves in austenitic weld materials. Inhomogenity in the austenitic weld material is represented by discretizing the inhomogeneous region into several homogeneous layers. At each interface between the layers the reflection and transmission problem is computed and yields energy direction, amplitude and energy coefficients. The ray amplitudes are computed accurately by taking into account directivity, divergence and density of rays, phase relations as well as transmission coefficients. Ultrasonic sound fields obtained from the ray tracing model are compared quantitatively with the 2D Elastodynamic Finite Integration Technique (EFIT). The excellent agreement between both models confirms the validity of the presented ray tracing results. Experiments are conducted on austenitic weld samples with longitudinal beam transducer as transmitting probe and amplitudes at the rear surface are scanned by means of electrodynamical probes. Finally, the ray tracing model results are also validated through the experiments.
Ultrasound propagation in inhomogeneous anisotropic materials is difficult to examine because of the directional dependency of elastic properties. Simulation tools play an important role in developing advanced reliable ultrasonic testing techniques for the inspection of anisotropic materials particularly austenitic cladded materials and dissimilar welds. A 2-D Ray tracing method is developed for evaluating ray path, amplitude and travel time for three wave modes namely quasi longitudinal wave (qP), quasi shear vertical wave (qSV) and shear horizontal waves (SH) in anisotropic materials such as austenitic cladded materials. The inhomogenity in the anisotropic material is represented by discretizing the anisotropic region into several homogeneous layers. The ray paths are traced during its propagation through the various interfaces between those layers. At each interface the problem of reflection and refraction is solved. The ray amplitudes are computed by taking into account the directivity and phase relations. Ray divergence variation and ray transmission coefficients at each refraction boundary are considered. The Ray tracing results for ultrasonic field profiles in austenitic cladded materials are validated quantitatively by 2-D Elastodynamic Finite Integration Technique (EFIT) results and by the experiments.
In this contribution a simulation tool is developed to compute the energy skewing angles and energy coefficients
for the reflected and refracted plane waves in following general cases: (1) reflection and refraction
of plane elastic waves at an interface between isotropic and transversely isotropic solid, (2) reflection
and refraction of plane elastic waves at an interface between transversely isotropic and isotropic solid, (3)
reflection and refraction of plane elastic waves at an interface between two general transversely isotropic
solid and (4) reflection of plane elastic waves from a stress free boundary of a transversely isotropic solid.
Computational results for analytically evaluated acoustic wave energy skewing angles and energy reflection
and transmission coefficients in acoustically anisotropic materials such as austenitic steel materials
exhibiting columnar grain orientation are presented. The obtained results show that the acoustic energy
skewing angles and coefficients in austenitic steel materials strongly depend upon the columnar grain
orientation and are less influenced by the grain orientations which are parallel and perpendicular to the
interface.
This contribution describes a computationally efficient ray tracing algorithm for evaluating transducer generated ultrasonic wave fields in anisotropic materials such as austenitic cladded and austenitic weld components. According to this algorithm, ray paths are traced during its propagation through various layers of the material and at each Interface the problem of reflection and transmission is solved. The presented algorithm evaluates the transducer generated ultrasonic fields accurately by taking in to account the directivity, divergence, density of rays, phase relations as well as transmission coefficients. The ray tracing algorithm is able to calculate the ultrasonic wave fields generated by a point source as well as a finite dimension transducer. The simulation results are compared quantitatively with the results obtained from Elastodynamic Finite Integration Technique (EFIT) on several configurations generally occuring in the ultrasonic non destructive testing of anisotropic materials. The excellent agreement between both models confirms the validity of the presented ray tracing algorithm. Finally, the ray tracing model results are also validated by means of experiments.
Up to now there is no sufficient technique to detect transverse cracks in austenitic and dissimilar welds which recently are of increasing interest in the integrity surveillance of nuclear power plants as well as in quality control of longitudinally welded pipes. Weld inspection by interpretation of single A-scans will lead to erroneous results due to effects caused by anisotropy and in worst case might leave flaws undetected. Therefore, imaging techniques such as the synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) should be used. If the SAFT algorithm is applied on data taken from austenitic welds, the inhomogeneous, anisotropic structure of these welds has to be taken into account in order to properly attribute amplitudes measured in A-scans to the corresponding coordinates in the region of interest. While this has been investigated in the past, all attempts so far were limited to the imaging of longitudinal cracks which requires a less complicated setup than the imaging of transverse cracks. In this paper we give an outline of our attempts to reconstruct images of transverse cracks in different welds. For this purpose a SAFT program based on ray tracing and a layered structure weld model derived from an empirical model of grain orientations in welds are used. The results of the image reconstruction on experimental data are shown and compared to images obtained by assuming an isotropic homogeneous model. Root reflection and crack tip echo are clearly visible which allows an estimation of size and position of the crack with good accuracy.
Ultrasonic examination of anisotropic inhomogeneous austenitic welds is challenging, because of the columnar grain structure of the weld leads to beam skewing and splitting. Modeling tools play an important role in understanding the ultrasound field propagation and optimization of experimental parameters during the ultrasonic testing of austenitic welds as well as the interpretation of the test results. In this contribution, an efficient theoretical model based on the ray tracing concepts is developed to calculate the ultrasonic fields in inhomogeneous austenitic welds quantitatively. The developed model determines the ultrasound fields by taking into account the directivity of the ray source, the inhomogenity of the weld as well as ray transmission coefficients. Directivity of the ray source in columnar grained austenitic materials (including layback orientation) is obtained in three dimensions based on Lamb's reciprocity theorem. Ray energy reflection and transmission coefficients at an interface between two general columnar grained austenitic materials are calculated in three dimensions. The ray tracing model predictions on inhomogeneous austenitic weld material are compared against those from CIVA, a commercial non-destructive modeling and simulation tool. The ultrasonic modeling tools in CIVA are based on semi-analytical solutions. For beam propagation simulation, a so-called 'pencil method' is used, which involves modeling the probe as a set of individual source points, each radiating 'a bundle' of diverging rays into the medium and integrating those elementary contributions. Inhomogenity in the weld region is approximated by mapping the grain orientations on weld macrograph. Simulation results for ultrasonic field profiles for an austenitic weld are shown to be in good agreement with the corresponding experimental results.
This article describes a comprehensive quantitative analysis on effect of columnar grain orientation on ultrasonic plane wave energy reflection and transmission behaviour in acoustically anisotropic austenitic weld materials. The quantitative results are presented for following general interfaces (a) Isotropic-Anisotropic, (b) Anisotropic-Isotropic, (c) Fluid-Anisotropic, (d) Anisotropic-Fluid, (e) Anisotropic-Anisotropic, (f) Anisotropic-Free surface occur during the ultrasonic non destructive evaluation of austenitic weld materials. Explicit analytical expressions are presented for energy reflection and transmission coefficients at an interface between two arbitrarily oriented transversely isotropic materials. By applying explicit analytical expressions for energy reflection and transmission coefficients, numerical results are presented for several columnar grain orientations of the transverse isotropic austenitic weld material including both real and complex domain of the reflected and transmitted normal component of slowness vectors. Valid domains of incident wave vector angles, angular dependency of energy reflection and transmission coefficients and critical angles for reflected and transmitted waves are discussed. The existence of a reflected (or) transmitted second branch of quasi shear vertical waves and its consequence to the ultrasonic non destructive testing of austenitic weld materials are investigated. The presented comprehensive quantitative evaluation provides an overview on the effect of anisotropic properties on energy reflection and transmission coefficients in columnar grained austenitic weld materials.
For the radiographic investigation of large cargo Containers the energies of conventional Xray tubes are inadequately for certain layer thicknesses. In that case the high energy radiation sources like electron accelerators and gamma radiators (60CO) are adequate for the non invasive inspection of large Containers because of the high penetration through thick materials. Multiple imaging even enables to distinguish between different materials. The main challenging task in air and sea cargo Container inspection is to improve the detectability of contraband and dangerous materials which are hidden in the heterogeneously packed Containers by detailed analysis of cluttered radiographic images. So it is to be expected that objects of organic substances like certain explosives or their precursors are hard to identify behind thick walls of heavy metal objects such as engine-blocks with flat bottom holes. The primary aim here is to investigate the detectability of dangerous materials (typically of light elements) in cargo Containers using high energy X-ray digital radiography.