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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.
The inspection of austenitic and dissimilar welds using ultrasound demands for sophisticated testing techniques. The application of reconstruction methods like the Synthetic Aperture Focusing Technique (SAFT) on the measurement results provides an appropriate approach for defect characterization and sizing. Nevertheless, the reconstruction algorithm has to consider the aniso-tropic wave propagation inside the inhomogeneous weld material. In recent years the detection of transverse cracks has become increasingly important for ensuring the structural integrity of pipes in the primary circuit of nuclear power plants or longitudinally welded, cladded pipes. However, relia-ble inspection techniques are hardly available. In this particular case, it is expected that the compar-atively long propagation path of the ultrasonic wave field inside the inhomogeneous weld material enhances the effect of anisotropy and influences the accuracy and the signal-to-noise-ratio of the reconstruction result. In this contribution we suggest an advanced ultrasonic testing technique for detecting and sizing of transversal cracks in austenitic and dissimilar welds. The method applies a SAFT reconstruction algorithm considering the anisotropy and the inhomogeneity. A V-arrangement of the transducers in pitch-catch technique is chosen to avoid a direct coupling on the weld face. The reconstruction algo-rithm is based on an extended 3-dimensional weld model and uses a ray-tracing approach for de-termining the wave propagation paths. Along with the reconstruction algorithm the transducer set-up and experimental results of different specimens with artificial transverse flaws are presented. The availability of the proposed method for crack sizing is assessed in comparison to conventional testing techniques.
The synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT) is an imaging technique commonly used in ultrasonic inspection. In order to apply SAFT to the inspection of austenitic welds, the inhomogeneous anisotropic nature of the weld structure has to be taken into account. A suitable approach to accomplish this, is to couple the SAFT-algorithm with a ray tracing program (RT-SAFT). While SAFT-imaging of cracks in austenitic welds by use of ray tracing has been carried out before, all attempts so far were limited to longitudinal cracks which usually allows a treatment as 2-dimensional problem. In case of transverse cracks, a full 3-dimensional ray tracing is necessary in order to perform a SAFT-reconstruction. In this paper, we give an outline of our attempts to reconstruct images of transverse cracks in austenitic welds, utilizing 3-dimensional ray tracing and a layered structure model derived from an empirical model of grain orientations in welds. We present results of this RT-SAFT on experimental data taken from transverse cracks in different austenitic welds, which show that size and position of the cracks can be estimated with good accuracy, and compare them to images obtained by assuming an isotropic homogeneous medium which corresponds to the application of the classical SAFT-algorithm.