You are on page 1of 7

PAUT based Techniques Developed for Power Industries and Refinery in

Taiwan

Yung-How Wu
1
, Chu-Chung Hsiao
2

MCL, Industrial Technology Research Institute
Rm 827, Bldg. 52, No. 195, Sec. 4, Chung Hsing Rd., Chutung, Hsinchu, Taiwan 31040, R.O.C.
886-(0)933792939; yhwu01@itri.org.tw
886- (0)922956668; cch01@itri.org.tw,

ABSTRACT
Although conventional ultrasonic method is still widely used elsewhere, PAUT technique is applied increasingly
for improving the ISI of utility, refinery and as well the emerging wind power in Taiwan. PAUT together with
scanner is one of the major advantages to precede conventional UT by enhancing the defect characterization or
inspection speed. In this study, special scanners were designed and employed with PAUT for the inspection of
composite blades, bolts of wind turbine and anchor bolts of nuclear RPV skirt. Results showed that delamination
of composite and fatigue crack of bolt may be detected and sized in more confidence and convenience for in-situ
inspections. Moreover, PAUT was also used to characterize carefully the inner crack of pressure vessel for FFS
assessment. Crack was found in safe margin and hence remained to operate. In conclusions, PAUT together with
manipulator designed for specific purpose may facilitate the applications of PAUT technique widely in ISI of
various industrial sectors.

Keywords: Phased Array, Ultrasonic, Wind turbine, Blade, Bolt, Refinery, FFS

INTRODUCTION
Though phased array ultrasonic technique (PAUT) has been well known and commonly used in medical field, it
is just used increasingly in industrial sectors as energy, transportation and materials. Most NDE technicians now
a day are still using conventional single element ultrasonic method in manufacturing or in service inspection due
to the higher cost and skill required by PAUT technique. However, the demand of fast transportation and low
energy consumption vehicles and structures is driving the application and evolution of advanced digital NDT
methods such as PAUT. Better inspection result may be achieved to meet the more stringent quantitative
requirements for better O&M by FFS for example. It therefore generates a cycle for the continuing evolution
and challenge of various NDT disciplines as shown in Figure 1. To meet more stringent application demands,
materials of higher strength and thinner section are pursued by the mechanical engineers that smaller defects are
then required to find and measure by NDT technicians with advanced systems or techniques. Inspectors with
better training, experience and education is necessary and in turns, to assure faster transportation and as well
lighter or safer structures.


Figure 1: The correlation and challenge of NDT related disciplines

As known by NDE professionals, automation or mechanized NDT is a good way to minimize human error and
to increase accuracy of the inspection. Thanks to the fast growing of microelectronic and processing techniques,
NDE methods especially as UT and ET are used together with manipulator by inspectors more than ever today.
To develop automated digital NDT methods for improving the inspection performance, various disciplines
should be considered as shown in Figure 2.


Figure 2: Various disciplines to consider in automated digital NDT methods.

AUTOMATED TECHNIQUES FOR ABWR RIP WELD
The Taipower advanced BWR under construction was developed by working group of GE, Nippon Tokyo
Electric, Hitachi and Toshiba. One of major differences between ABWR and conventional BWR is the ten units
of RIP (Reactor Internal Pump) designed for independent cooling water circulation. Each RIP was connected to
the RPV by a circumferential weld located deep inside narrow gap of 18mm as in Figure 3. Moreover to
alleviate radiation exposure during ISI, remote operation NDE method and scanner is required for the inspection
of RIP weld right under RPV. Figure 4 shows a remote controlled inspection system including a special designed
scanner, PAUT probes and EC FGI method together with camera monitoring was developed to inspect
circumferential dissimilar weld in the gap.


Figure 3: ABWR RIP location and the weld inside the gap of 18mm



Figure 4: Remote operation PAUT/ECFGI system and accessories for RIP weld inspection

The PAUT or array EC probes designed for this application were limited in dimension by the narrow gap and of
17mm in maximum thickness. And for inspecting nickel based dissimilar metal weld, frequency less than
1.5MHz was chosen. Both 1D 16 elt and 2D 30elt PAUT probes were made for detecting and sizing
circumferential or axial cracks on RIP reference sample. Two probes were set on probe module to cover the area
generally specified by ASME code. Moreover, EC FGI technique based on current perturbation principle was
also incorporated in this RIP inspection method for detecting and sizing open crack on outer surface of weld and
HAZ. Both techniques proved satisfactory in crack detection and sizing on sample block as shown in Figure 5.


(a) (b)


(c) (d)
Figure 5: (a) RIP sample block with artificial cracks, (b) PAUT result of circ. crack-F4 and axial crack-F2,
(c) arrangement of EC FGI or PAUT probe relative to the weld and defects and (d) EC FGI result of
surface cracks F2, F3 and F4.


Probe module & RIP sample block
ECFGI system & array probes
PAUT Probe
Axial cracks Circ. crack
ECFGI coils
WIND TURBINE BLADE INSPECTION
Composite blade, tower and turbine are three main structural components of wind turbines. Statistics showed
that downtime ratio due to wind turbine blade damage was generally more than 30 percent and the impact to the
operating cost of wind power had been great. Even worse, huge wind blades, once broken, may drop a few
hundred meters around endangering life and property safety. Failure of wind turbines and even bearing, anchor
bolts of wind tower did occur in several locations in Taiwan as shown in Figure 6.


Figure 6: Failure of wind turbine blades, bearing and anchor bolts in different locations in Taiwan.

Wind turbine blades are normally made with GFRP or CFRP and fixed to the wind turbine hub with bolts of
annular distribution. Internal delamination or damage of blades could be ignored during service and extend
further to cause unscheduled shutdown. In this study, PAUT method with special manipulator was developed
mainly for the inspection of delamination at trailing edge of turbine blade. Considering the rope access condition,
the light weighted manipulator designed was capable of holding the probe to contact the blade surface and to
scan along the edge steadily as in Figure 7. Though ultrasonic frequency lower than 5MHz was generally used
for inspecting resin matrix composites, the PAUT probe employed in our case was of 10MHz, 128 elements.
Results shown in Figure 8 clearly presented gas hole, interface and back wall echoes in trailing edge region
suggesting that the composite blade had been manufactured with good matrix quality.


Figure 7: Manipulator designed the inspection of trailing edge of wind turbine blade.

Figure 8: PAUT result by using manipulator to scan along the trailing edge of turbine blade

PAUT METHOD USED WITH FFS ASSESSMENT
During scheduled shutdown, inner crack was detected by UT on the inner surface of a hydrogen absorber which
is filled catalyst pearl powder inside the pressure vessel. Since it may cost a lot to open the tank for repair,
PAUT was then used to locate and size the crack in more details for FFS assessment. As shown in Figure 9,
PAUT result was combined with the local structure of vessel and weld and then to generate a FEM model with
cracks in measured dimension of 5.4mmD 35mmL.



Figure 9: PAUT result of inner crack integrated with local structure of vessel and weld

Based on the conditions assumed in Table 1, a safety factor (SF = K
IC
/K
eff
) was defined and calculated, where
K
IC
is the material constant and K
eff
is the effective stress intensity under various dimensions of crack and weld
geometry. Considering various crack depth a and weld crown height d, the distribution of maximum K
eff
in MPa
and SF was shown in Figure 10. The stress at crack tip was not high compared to other area such as the vessel
plate or weld crown corners. And the greater the SF, the safer the structure is with crack present.

Table 1: Parameters used in FFS assessment

Parameters Value
Youngs modulus* (E) 200 GPa
Poison ratio ( ) 0.3
Operation pressure (P
0
) 10 MPa
Weld crown height (d) 0.10 mm ~ 10 mm
Crack depth (a) 0.10 mm ~ 15 mm
Fracture toughness* (K
Ic
) 50 MPa*m
0.5




(a) (b)
Figure 10: (a) Von Mises stress distribution while crack depth is of 4mm and weld crown height 4mm assumed,
(b) distribution of SF and K
eff
vary with parameters a and d.

RPV ANCHOR BOLT INSPECTION
Bolting degradation and failure is not rare in nuclear power plants and it was also found on RPV anchor bolts
due to stress corrosion cracking. Though conventional ultrasonic PE method are still used as a common practice
in pre service or ISI of bolt, PAUT based technique with manipulator was proposed and under development for
better crack detection and sizing mainly. And, various notches and FBH were made on bolts of different length
for defect characterizing as shown in Figure 11. To cover the whole inspection area of bolt in dimension of 76
mmD 660mmL, a 128 elt of 10 MHz probe was used. Results as shown in Figure 12 indicate that notch size
down to 1mm deep may be clearly shown with A, B and C scans. Notches of various length in circumferential of
radial direction may be differentiated directly by the images but should be correlated carefully further.

CONCLUSIONS
The continuing demand for faster transportation and lighter, safer structures has been driven the NDT to achieve
better inspection performance, efficiency and reliability. Portable PAUT system together with mechanical
scanner is a representative option among NDT methods to achieve the goal particularly in harsh environments
with radiation or high altitude for instance. Despite this, human error is always a crucial concern for reliable
inspection and hence performance demonstration is necessary.

REFERENCES
1. GE Nuclear Energy-ABWR Design Control Document, Rev. 4, March 1997.
2. Wu, Yung-How and Hsiao, Chu-Chung, Development of remote operation RIP inspection method using
PAUT technique, contract research, Taipower/ITRI, Dec. 2009.
3. Wu, Yung-How and Hsiao, Chu-Chung, Development of Non-destructive Inspection Techniques for Wind
Turbine Components, 2013 Taiwan Wind Energy Symposium, National Taiwan Ocean University/Taiwan
Wind Energy Association, Dec. 5, 2013.
4. Wu, Yung-How and Hsiao, Chu-Chung, Inspection and FFS evaluation of crucial structures in refinery,
contract ISI, CPC/Universal Inspection Technologies/ITRI, Mar. 2010.
5. Wu, Yung-How and Hsiao, Chu-Chung, Development and Feasibility Study of PAUT technique for
Anchor Bolts, Invited talk in technical forum of anchor bolt inspection and safety control, Taipower, May,
2013.






max
0 0.002 0.004 0.006 0.008 0.01 0.012 0.014
a (m)
0
0.002
0.004
0.006
0.008
0.01
d

(
m
)
2<SF<5
SF>5
unit: MPa*m
0.5



(a) (b)
Figure 11: (a) Reference sample of RPV skirt anchor bolt with notches and FBH, (b) manipulator seated
on bolt end for PAUT probe scanning.


(a)

(b) (c)
Figure 12: (a) Circumferential notches of 2.5 mmD along the bolt were detected. (b) notches of different
circumferential length may be compared directly and (c) notch down to 1mmD may be all clearly shown.

You might also like