High temperature ultrasonic measurements of plant and components for defect detection and monitoring
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Warwick
Department Name: Physics
Abstract
There are many instances where components and plant operate at elevated temperatures such as turbines, high temperature processing pipework, power generation boilers and reactors. Currently, most non-destructive testing (NDT) is carried out at lower or ambient temperature, necessitating at least partial shut-down of the process. Planned outage of plant is costly but the cost of unplanned outage due to catastrophic failure can run to millions of pounds, and can have extremely serious consequences for the safety of personnel and the public. In addition, some plant contains areas that are extremely difficult to access even during an outage meaning that the only viable approach is to use permanently installed monitoring. We propose devices and concepts to enable high temperature monitoring and inspection where it is currently impossible. This is stimulated not only by the industrial imperative, but also by major advances in knowledge and understanding of high temperature piezoelectric materials, in thick film and thin film form, operating at temperatures up to 800C. The attraction in developing high temperature sensors from these materials is that they can be robust, inexpensive and permanently installed on plant. In a novel hybrid system concept, not previously applied to high temperature inspection, we will combine these with improved non-contact ultrasonic generation techniques.
Publications
Burrows S
(2014)
High temperature thickness measurements of stainless steel and low carbon steel using electromagnetic acoustic transducers
in NDT & E International
Burrows S
(2012)
Sol-gel prepared bismuth titanate for high temperature ultrasound transducers
in RSC Advances
Description | There are many instances where components and plant operate at elevated temperatures such as turbines, high temperature processing pipework, power generation boilers and reactors. Currently, most non-destructive testing (NDT) is carried out at lower or ambient temperature, necessitating at least partial shut-down of the process. Planned outage of plant is costly but the cost of unplanned outage due to catastrophic failure can run to millions of pounds, and can have extremely serious consequences for the safety of personnel and the public. In addition, some plant contains areas that are extremely difficult to access even during an outage meaning that the only viable approach is to use permanently installed monitoring. We developed three key strands of research in this project to address some of the challenges experienced for high temperature ultrasonic transduction. 1) The preparation of high temperature piezoelectric material (Bismuth Titanate) by a true Sol-Gel method was developed and demonstrated, leading to the development of thick film materials that could be screen printed onto flexible foils of stainless steel. 2) The development of high temperature electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs) that have been demonstrated operating in a true send-receive mode at temperatures in excess of 900C on steel. 3) We successfully demonstrated the combination of non-contact ultrasonic generators (EMATs and pulsed lasers) with other high temperature piezoelectric transducers such as vacuum deposited AlNi thin film materials, for the generation and detection of ultrasonic guided waves. In developing these transduction methods we have extended the range of currently available high temperature ultrasonic probes, and characterised the degradation performance of a Sol-Gel prepared high temperature piezoelectric material. We did not have the opportunity of testing these probes in situ, but undertook extensive lab based demonstrations on representative samples at representative temperatures. One of the major challenges that we faced relates to bonding the piezoelectric transducers to steel samples in such a way that a robust bond is formed that is capable of being cycled up to temperatures of 400C. |
Exploitation Route | The method has been duplicated and referenced by other researchers. |
Sectors | Aerospace Defence and Marine Manufacturing including Industrial Biotechology Other |
Description | Published findings for new high temperature NDT measurements using ultrasound. |
First Year Of Impact | 2014 |
Sector | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Other |
Impact Types | Societal Economic |
Description | BP British Petroleum |
Organisation | BP (British Petroleum) |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | RCNDE industrial support |
Start Year | 2009 |
Description | RWE nPower |
Organisation | RWE AG |
Department | RWE nPower |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | RCNDE industrial support |
Start Year | 2009 |
Description | Shell Global Solutions International |
Organisation | Shell Global Solutions International BV |
Country | Netherlands |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | RCNDE support funding |
Start Year | 2009 |
Description | Tenaris |
Organisation | Tenaris SA |
Country | Luxembourg |
Sector | Private |
PI Contribution | RCNDE industrial support |
Start Year | 2009 |