Introduction

The BRITE-EURAM Project 5907 "NDT Methods for Flaw Detection During Welding" [ Acknowledgements] is reaching its final phase. For the past 4 years a consortium of European partners has been investigating the possibilities of performing NDT between weld runs as an on-line operation. The two methods which have shown the most promise for this application are radioscopy (or real time radiography, RTR) and Time of Flight Diffraction (TOFD) ultrasonic testing. This article describes recent developments within the project aimed at online, automated weld inspection at elevated temperatures using TOFD. Firstly a description, with scan examples, of the initial high temperature experiments is given. Secondly, a description of the automatic defect detection software developed at the University of Surrey will be made and it will be shown how the software can deal with scans of very low SNR. Finally a brief outline of the final TOFD trials for the project will be given.

Table of contents |Full Text|

• Introduction
• High temperature TOFD scanning
• Automatic defect detection in TOFD scans
• September trials
• References
• Acknowledgements