AUTOMATED IN-PROCESS PHASED ARRAY ULTRASONIC INSPECTION OF MULTIPASS WELDS

Description

Quality assurance of multipass welds is an important aspect to ensure their structural integrity and safe operation. However, common practice is to perform weld inspection after all layers are deposited. This may lead to expensive and tedious reworks, increased lead times, diminished throughputs and worsened scrappage. However, detection of weld discontinuities at the point of manufacture allows an opportunity to rectify them at an earlier stage. This will reduce manufacturing costs, wastage, and product cycle time significantly. Therefore, a high-temperature phased array ultrasound roller-probe is proposed for automated in-process inspection of multipass welds. In contrast to traditional roller-probes, the one presented here can tolerate test material temperatures up to 350 0C and is able to perform angled weld inspection using 550 shear waves into the material. The roller probe demonstrated high temperature inspection capabilities by successfully detecting artificial defects embedded into a weld immediately after the deposition.

Period	25 Aug 2020
Event title	QNDE 2020
Event type	Conference
Degree of Recognition	International