PNNL

Abstract

A study was conducted to assess the ability of advanced ultrasonic techniques to detect and accurately determine the size of flaws from the far-side of wrought austenitic piping welds. Far-side inspections of nuclear system piping welds are currently performed on a “best effort” basis and do not conform to ASME Code Section XI Appendix VIII performance demonstration requirements. For this study, four circumferential welds in 610mm diameter, 36mm thick ASTM A-358, Grade 304 vintage austenitic stainless steel pipe were examined. The welds were fabricated with varied welding parameters; both horizontal and vertical pipe orientations were used, with air and water backing, to simulate field welding conditions. A series of saw cuts, electro-discharge machined (EDM) notches, and implanted fatigue cracks were placed into the heat affected zones of the welds. The saw cuts and notches ranged in depth from 7.5% to 28.4% through-wall. The implanted cracks ranged in depth from 5% through-wall to 64% through-wall. The welds were examined with phased array technology at 2.0 MHz, and with low-frequency/Synthetic Aperture Focusing Technique (SAFT) methods in the 250-400 kHz regime. These results were compared to conventional ultrasonic techniques as a baseline. The examinations showed that both phased-array and low-frequency/SAFT were able to detect and accurately length-size, but not depth size, the notches and flaws through the welds. The ultrasonic results were insensitive to the different welding techniques used in each weld.