Cast austenitic stainless steel (CASS) commonly used in U.S. nuclear power plants is a coarse-grained, elastically anisotropic material. The coarse-grained nature of CASS makes ultrasonic inspection of in-service components difficult. Recently, low-frequency phased array ultrasound has emerged as a candidate for the CASS piping weld inspection. However, issues such as low signal-to-noise ratio and difficulty in discriminating between flaw and non-flaw signals remain. This paper discusses the evaluation of a number of signal processing algorithms for improving flaw detection in CASS materials. The full paper provides details of the algorithms being evaluated, along with preliminary results.
Revised: February 4, 2014 |
Published: March 24, 2011
Citation
Ramuhalli P., A.D. Cinson, S.L. Crawford, R.V. Harris, A.A. Diaz, and M.T. Anderson. 2011.An Evaluation of Signal Processing Tools for Improving Phased Array Ultrasonic Weld Inspection. In Smart Sensor Phenomena, Technology, Networks, and Systems, March 6, 2011, San Diego, California. Proceedings of the SPIE, 7982, Article No. 798212. Bellingham, Washington:Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.PNNL-SA-78589.doi:10.1117/12.882000