Ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation of welds in clad piping systems

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Many industrial piping systems, such as those used for off-shore oil & gas recovery, are vulnerable to attack viafrom the corrosive fluids inside the pipe. Therefore, the pipes may have a protective inner layer or claddingmade from a non-isotropic material such as stainless steel or Inconel. To avoid the costly and environmentallydevastating effects of a pipe failure the weld seam linking two adjacent pipe sections together is ultrasonicallyinspected after construction. In this project, we attempt to develop more accurate techniques for conductingthese inspections using two-dimensional ultrasonic arrays. By combining together the signals received at all thearray elements after reflection from weld defects, one can focus on the areas of interest and thereby get moreaccurate information. However, such techniques are time consuming and require great amounts of computerdata storage and processing power. We will be developing inspection methods and signal processingtechniques to make the process more efficient while maintaining high accuracy.