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- Austenitic stainless steel (1)
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Austenitic stainless steel welds as well as dissimilar metal welds with nickel alloy filler material, used in safety relevant parts of nuclear power plants, still challenge the ultrasonic inspection. The weld material forms large oriented grains which lead on the one hand to high sound scattering and on the other hand – to inhomogeneity and to the acoustic anisotropy of the weld structure. The ultrasonic wave fronts propagate not linearly, as in ferritic weld joints, but along the curves, which depend on the specific grain structure of the weld. Due the influence of these phenomena, it is difficult to analyze the inspection results and to classify the ultrasonic indications, which could be both from the weld geometry and from the material defects. A correct flaw sizing is not possible.
In an ongoing research project, different techniques to improve the reliability of ultrasonic testing at these kinds of welds are investigated. In a first step (in the previous research project) two ultrasonic inspection techniques were developed and validated on plane test specimens with artificial and realistic flaws. In the ongoing project, these techniques are applied to circumferential pipe welds with longitudinal and transverse flaws.
The technique developed at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Germany uses a combination of ray tracing and synthetic aperture focusing technique (SAFT). To investigate the unknown grain structure, the velocity distribution of weld-transmitting ultrasound waves is measured and used to model the weld by ray tracing.
The second technique, developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Nondestructive Testing (IZFP) in Germany, uses Sampling Phased Array (Full Matrix Capture) combined with the reverse phase matching (RPM) and the gradient elastic constant descent algorithm (GECDM). This inspection method is able to estimate the elastic constants of the columnar grains in the weld and offers an improvement of the reliability of ultrasonic testing through the correction of the sound field distortion. The unknown inhomogeneity and anisotropy are investigated using a reference indication and the special optimization algorithm.
Both reconstruction techniques give quantitative inspection results and allow the defect sizing. They have been compared to conventional ultrasonic testing with techniques, which are state of the art for components in nuclear power plants. The improvement will be quantified by the comparison of the probability of detection (POD) of each technique.
Composite pressure vessels are important components in the storage of gases under high pressure. Among others, a common type of pressure vessel is made of a metal liner overwrapped with a fibre-reinforced plastic material. Conventional hydrostatic tests, used to assess the integrity of pressure vessels, may overstress the material and thus reduce the remaining lifetime of the tested component. Therefore, a truly non-destructive structural health monitoring (SHM) system would not only ensure a safer usage and extended lifetime, but also remove the necessity for periodic inspection and the testing of pressure vessels. The authors propose the use of guided ultrasonic waves, which have the potential to detect the main damage types, such as cracking in the metal liner, fibre breaks and composite matrix delamination. For the design of such an SHM system, multimodal ultrasonic wave propagation and defect-mode interaction must be fully understood. In this paper, simulation results obtained by means of finite element modelling (FEM) are presented. Based on the findings, suggestions are made regarding appropriate wave modes and their interaction with different flaw types, as well as the necessary excitation and suitable sensor configurations. Finally, a first approach for a reliable SHM system for composite pressure vessels is suggested.