NDTnet 1998 Aug, Vol.3 No.8

Abstract

Introduction
A new concept has been designed for the inservice inspection of PWR reactor coolant pump welds, based on a robot system that allows for a NDT examination from the inner surface. This paper shall address both the design of the NDT equipment, and the experience gained from the successful qualification exercises performed on the full-scale RCP mock-up at the Ringhals site.

Development of the combined UT and ECT equipment and procedures
Commercially available UT and Eddy current data acquisition systems were used. Customized UT transducers and ECT probes were developed to account for the coarse grain structures typical of cast austenitic materials. Dedicated scanning plates (see figure 1) and electrical cabling were designed to interface the various probes and the data acquisition system to the OASIS inspection robot.

Experience gained from the qualification exercices
NDT procedure qualification (open trials) and NDT personnel qualification (blind trials) were performed according to the requirements of the Swedish nuclear authority. In both cases the outcome was successful. Relevant examples from the open trials shall be presented to illustrate the excellent examination capability of the method.

Figure 1: scanning, Dlate mounted on OASIS inspection robot

Abstract Source:
Book of Abstracts, 7th European Conference on Non-Destructive Testing, 26-29 May 1998, ISBN: 87-986898-0-00

Full-Text Source:
Proceedings of the 7th European Conference on Non-Destructive Testing, 26-29 May 1998, ISBN:

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