Non-Destructive Testing Technology
Year:2021 | Volume:2 | Issue:7|Papers Count:16

High sensitivity, high accuracy and almost no limitations on type of test material has made ultrasonic testing (UT) a desirable nondestructive testing method. Ultrasonic wave velocity and attenuation are two important parameters that affect an ultrasonic test. Attenuation is the loss of wave energy and reduction in wave amplitude during the propagation of waves through the material. In this paper, the attenuation coefficient is measured in an St37 specimen at a frequency of 1 MHz. The test is conducted in pulse-echo mode with immersion technique. The sources of error are identified, and the measurement uncertainty is calculated. In this measurement, the sources of error include errors due to measuring the length of the part and the amplitude of the echoes reflected from the back surface of the part. The attenuation coefficient is 39. 33 dB/m and the measurement uncertainty is ± 8. 8 dB/m. The noise in the pulser-reciever system is found to be the main source of error in the measurement of amplitudes of reflected echoes from which the attenuation coefficient is calculated.

Nature of additive manufacturing processes dictate direction-related properties to the final parts and this degree of anisotropy is highly dependent on process parameters and machine setup. Therefore, properties in such materials should be known in any direction. There are several methods including destructive and non-destructive techniques for specifying mechanical properties in parts. Using ultrasonic testing, as a nondestructive method, in order to determine elastic constants for rocks, woods, composite and wrought materials indicative of its reliability and validity, as well as its repeatability. In this paper, 9 independent elastic constant for orthotropic additively manufactured direct metal laser sintering (DMLS) parts are determined from longitudinal and transverse ultrasound velocities via contact ultrasonic testing for different manufacturing process parameters. This work also carried out comparisons between mechanical properties of as-built parts in three principle directions, as well as ultrasound wave velocities.

Laser shearing interferometry or Shearography is one of the new optic methods for calculating the very small surface displacement derivatives in order of microns. Shearography can be beneficially used in the non-destructive testing of materials, especially in composites. In this paper, laser shearography is used to detect some kinds of defects like cavities, solid inclusions and matrix cracks in both flat and curved furnaces made of carbon fiber reinforced composites. As the system parameters and loading amount are the most important factors affecting defect detection ability in this technique, the test scenarios including all these factors have been compiled for both flat and curved surfaces. The shearography tests are performed to get the best results of defect detectability in the test specimens. The results show that the best responses are observed with a shear size of one half the approximated defect sizes. The thermal loading range of 3kW and 1kW in the 0. 5 and 1 seconds should be used as the best choices in the flat sheet and curved sheet specimens respectively.

Neutron radiography is one of the most advanced methods in non-destructive testing. The application of this useful and unique method is very wide and diverse and includes from the nuclear industry to the power plant industry, military industry, study of antiquities and research on new materials. In this method, neutrons are attenuated after passing through the material and interacting with the test sample, in proportion to the cross-section of neutron interaction with the nuclei and the thickness of material. The amount of radiation reaching to detector contains valuable information from inside the test material, which by detecting and converting into an image, the structural details of the material can be realized. Tehran Research Reactor, with several suitable neutron ports, is the most important neutron source in the country for applied research such as neutron radiography. The main requirements for neutron imaging are the source of neutron, the neutron beam shaping (collimator), the beam shutter, the sample table, the imaging medium, the beam catcher and the shielding room. In the present project, apart from the collimator which has been previously designed and built, other components required to create and set up a neutron radiography system has been designed and made in accordance with the principles of radiation protection and current knowledge in the field of neutron radiography. This design can implement two imaging methods based on film and digital imaging. Direct real time neutron radiography has been designed and implemented in this project for the first time in the country.

The eddy current nondestructive evaluation was investigated to estimate the service life of cast austenitic stainless steel tubes in the reformer unit of the direct reduction iron ore plan. This evaluation was performed at 60 kHz based on the impedance plane and as a point inspection method. Reference tubes with specified microstructure and service life were used for calibration. The optical and SEM microscopes were used for microstructural studies. The microscopic examination showed that the ascast microstructure has austenitic matrix with eutectic cells containing chromium and niobium carbides. It was also observed that with increasing operating time and increasing the intensity of aging, the microstructural changes occur more severely. These changes include oxidation and carburization of surface, creating of destructive phases, and depletion of chromium in the austenite matrix, variation of eutectic cells morphology and formation of the creep microcracks. The results of eddy current evaluation showed that microstructural changes due to increasing the service life have a significant effect on the electromagnetic response of the tube. As the life of the tubes increases, the self-inductance resistance index increases sharply and the resistivity index decreases. The interaction of these two index is indicated as a point on the impedance plane of for each tube. Comparison of the position of these points in the impedance plane indicates the existence of linear changes between electromagnetic and aging behaviors. Therefore, the service life of the reformer tubes can be estimated from the electromagnetic responses in the eddy current method.

This paper introduces a magnetic field perturbation based on the magnetic response received from a small area of the wall as a solution to measure the internal defects of the pipes. In this method, there is no need for magnetic saturation of the wall, and wall thickness does not affect its performance. To build a magnetic field perturbation receiver, a permanent magnet with Hall Effect sensor was used. Since the arrangement of the sensor ie. the position of the sensor relative to the magnet, is of great importance, so it was simulated using the finite element method and the best position of the sensor was presented by analyzing the software results. Since the wall thickness is reduced, so in the simulations for different depths of the defect, the values of the received magnetic response were recorded and used as a measure to evaluate the amount of thickness reduction or defect depth. Also, an experimental test system was developed to compare the results of theoretical modeling and its results were compared with the results of the proposed model. The results show that the proposed method can be used as an effective tool to identify internal defects.

Nowadays, ultrasonic guided waves are widely used in non-destructive inspection of pipelines due to their high accuracy and speed. One of the advantages of using the symmetric modes of guided waves is simplicity in propagation and easier interpretation of the results. This has led to their significant use in the inspection of pipelines. Depending on the type of damage, defects can appear on the surface of pipe in different forms such as cracks, cavities, porosity, etc. In this paper, by using the propagation of the first-order torsional symmetric mode, symmetric defects in the different dimensions and sizes are investigated. The various factors such as the excitation frequency, the thickness of pipe and position of the defects are investigated to determine the effect of each on the reflection. Also, in this study, the reflection coefficients for the defects with different sizes have been calculated and their related diagrams have been drawn to use them for estimating the geometric dimensions of symmetrical defects. Finally, with the study of reflection coefficients, it is observed that the excitation frequency, the thickness of pipe and position of the defects can be considered as factors that affecting the reflected wave reflection.

Due to the increase in the application of additive manufactured components in the industry, developing fast and accurate methods for defect evaluation of these products has become vitally important. In this study, a PLA sample was inspected by thermography. Several artificial defects varying in size and depth were produced in the specimen. A projector with 2 KW in power was utilized to heat the sample for the 15s. The infrared camera recorded the sample’ s temperature during the heating period and 30s after shutting down the source. Afterward, the best frame of raw data was selected. The contrast of defective and sound regions improved with applying the well-known Thermal Signal Reconstruction (TSR) image processing method to enhance the automatic detectability of defects. The contrast enhancement was studied quantitatively via adopting signal to noise ratio (SNR) parameter. According to the acquired results, TSR’ s 1st derivative image had the highest average of SNR. This amount was approximately four times higher than that of the best frame of raw data. Ultimately, to identify the defects automatically, k-means clustering was adopted. By comparing the segmented images, it was proved that the adopted process was successful in improving automatic defect detection. While the proportion of detectable defects through segmented image concluded from the best frame of raw data was only 70 percent, the figure for segmented images concluded form 1st and 2nd derivative of TSR was substantially higher at 100 percent.

Residual stresses occur in different processes such as plastic deformation, temperature variation and structural changes. Welding and metal deformation are conventional processes which lead to residual stress. Residual stress plays a key role in the characterization of welded structures, and it has a significant effect on fatigue behavior as well as the lifespan of loaded structures. Therefore, at the first step, measuring residual stress, and in the next level taking action to reduce or eliminate it by usual methods are of extreme significance. In this study, Lamb waves were applied to evaluate the local residual stress in thin steel plates. A two-dimensional hyperelastic nonlinear model on which a Lamb wave propagated was simulated in ABAQUS CAE finite element software. In order to create residual stress, loading was applied to the thin plate either perpendicular or parallel to the wave motion direction. In different frequencies and stresses, the behavior of A0 mode was scrutinized. Results indicated that A0 mode was sensitive to stress changes, and its changes against the residual stress followed a specific trend. In addition, sensitivity to residual stress decreases with increasing frequency. Hence, the frequency of 50 kHz is selected as the optimal frequency in inspecting thin steel plates.

Art paintings are valuable cultural assets in any country that they are always threatened by dangers such as rupture, scratches, and loss of pigments. Natural disasters, irresponsible handling, exposure to light and temperature changes are all dangers factors. Various non-destructive methods such as radiography testing (RT) and ultraviolet (UV) inspection can be used to identifying detect the location of defects without any damage the paintings. The radiography testing recognized hidden patterns and deep defects and the general structure of the painting due to the penetration of X-rays to the lower surfaces. In the ultraviolet inspection, information about scratches and surface defects is obtained, depending on the type and material of paint used. Images of both methods provide excellent information to restoration experts, but problems such as blurring images of the RT and darkening of some colors under ultraviolet light make it difficult to identify the defect regions. It is appropriate to use image processing techniques as an auxiliary tool to increase the contrast of the image. In this research, the Gabor filter has been used to increase the quality of the RT and UV images and reduce the blur of images; The Gabor filter use an automatic threshold level based on the deviation and mean pixel information of the images. Images reconstructed by the Gabor filter are efficient in identifying hidden designs and the location of defects.

Computed tomography using gamma-and X-rays has been using as one of the most reliable imaging modalities for non-destructive testing purposes in different fields of industry. These devices can provide a three-dimensional image of the sections inside the object under inspection. Based on the shape of the beam, the output beams from the beam source are placed in front of the source in the tomographic devices, detectors are placed in front of the source and rotated 360 degrees around the object to obtain projections and finally, the image is reconstructed. In this paper, a portable industrial CT system with the shape of a fan beam is simulated using the MCNPX2. 7e Monte Carlo code. The number of detectors was selected as 19 due to its portability, and an industrial standard phantoms and an innovative phantom were used to acquire projections for verification of simulation operation. Cobalt-60 gamma rays are recorded on the detectors after being transported from the object under study and generate important projection data for various angles. The results include a large number of projection functions that can then be used to create a sinogram matrix.

Plasma gliding-arc discharges is a non-equilibrium plasma that has many applications in research and industrial laboratories. Gliding plasma can be hot or cold plasma depending on the discharge power and gas flow rate, which leads to its various applications such as disinfection of fruits and vegetables, elimination of pollutant gases, increasing the staining of plastic surfaces. Plasma has been formed of ions, high-energy electrons, UV rays, and oxidants such as free radicals. In gliding reactors, a high voltage electrical discharge is applied between the two electrodes. Various species produced in plasma, including high-energy electrons, are effective in destroying and altering the atomic structure of copper electrodes. Changes in the structure of the electrodes in the long run will cause changes in temperature, density, and the type of species formed in the plasma. Therefore, in order to replace the reactor electrodes in a timely manner, it is necessary to evaluate the amount of structural changes in the electrodes over time. In this paper, changes in the structure of copper electrodes with a thickness of 4 mm and an effective length of 10 cm, which was used in a gliding arc research reactor for 80 hours to evaluate the effect of produced plasma on decontamination of agricultural products by the positron annihilation life-time spectroscopy has been investigated as a non-destructive test. The results show that the distance between the layers in the copper lattice has changed and the empty space between the atomic lattices has decreased and their number has increased.

In the process of transformer insulation production, unwanted occurrence of contaminations in the insulation will cause the electrical discharge and major damage. Therefore, in order to detect impurities in the insulation, radiographic test is used in the quality control unit of transformer insulation production. In the available radiographic test, the radiographic operator observes the output image of the clear shiny spots in the field of images as impurities, but some factors such as the noise of radiographic images and the small size of the existing contaminations, reduce the accuracy and speed. On the other hand, the existing method does not detect the type of contaminations. Therefore, if contaminations are identified in the insulation, it will be impossible to identify the source of contamination and clean the insulation production line. In this research, a system for analyzing the contaminations of electrical insulation of transformers called ICAS is proposed in which by using image processing and machine vision methods, while improving the quality of radiographic images, contaminations can be automatically found in Identified the electrical insulation components of the transformer and obtained information about the occurrence of impurities in the insulation production line by identifying the impurities of iron and aluminum.

In this paper, the capability of non-destructive method of magnetic flux leakage in characterizing the microstructure and mechanical properties of API X65 steel has been evaluated. Magnetic flux leakage method is a popular non-destructive inspection method for oil and gas pipelines based on the detection of magnetic flux leakage from the surface of the part. This test is widely used to identify all discontinuities including surface and subsurface cracks as well as thickness changes due to latent corrosion in the inner wall of pipelines. In this study, four different microstructures subjected to four different types of heat treatment have been used. The results show that changes in microstructural characteristics, including morphology of the ferrite phase (polyhedral or needle) as well as the size of the ferrite grains, affect the density of magnetic flux lines emitted inside the part and the amount of magnetic flux leaked from the surface. Therefore, one can use the magnetic flux leakage test to efficiently determine the type of microstructure as well as the mechanical properties of the part.

Digital image correlation (DIC) is widely used as a tool to measure displacements and surface strains. The generation of speckle pattern in DIC technique has some limitations. In addition to spray paint, other techniques including laser speckle have also been proposed to generate speckle patterns. In previous studies, the use of DIC as a non-destructive technique has been limited to detect the surface cracks. In the current study, the feasibility of DIC for detection of subsurface defects was investigated. A laser beam was utilized to generate the DIC speckle pattern. The tensile load was applied to a polypropylene specimen containing an artificial subsurface defect. The DIC images were recorded and analyzed before and after loading the specimen. The results of surface displacement in the direction of tension and perpendicular to tension revealed the defect. To study further, the surface strains of the specimen were determined. In the obtained results, the strain concentration indicated the defect in the specimen. The approximate size and shape of the artificial defect are recognizable in the measured strain distribution.