Ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation of welds in clad piping systems

许多工业管道系统，如用于海上石油和天然气开采的系统，很容易受到管道内腐蚀性流体的侵蚀。因此，管子可以有由非各向同性材料(如不锈钢或Inconel)制成的保护性内层或覆层。为了避免管道失效带来的昂贵和环境破坏的影响，将两个相邻管段连接在一起的焊缝在施工后进行超声波检查。在这个项目中，我们试图开发更精确的技术来使用二维超声阵列进行这些检查。通过将从焊接缺陷反射后在所有阵列单元接收的信号组合在一起，人们可以专注于感兴趣的区域，从而获得更准确的信息。然而，这种技术非常耗时，需要大量的计算机数据存储和处理能力。我们将开发检测方法和信号处理技术，以提高检测过程的效率，同时保持高精度。

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.