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The Study of Pitting Inspection in Pipes Using Guided Waves T(0,1) Mode

Using ultrasonic guided waves can achieve long range inspection along the pipeline rapidly. The presence of defect or other features on the pipe were identified by analyzing the reflected echoes as well as mode conversion phenomena. However, it is difficult for guided wave to find a minor corrosion, such as pitting. Therefore, a study of the reflection of torsional T(0,1) mode from pits on the pipe has been carried out and an advanced signal processing method wavelet transform is adopted to process the reflected echoes in this study.
In order to understand that characteristic of the reflected echoes of pits, the propagation of guided wave T(0,1) through pits was simulated by the finite element method. The frequency response of the signal reflected from the pits with different sizes was discussed both by finite element method and experimental method. Then, we discuss two types of pitting including regular- distributed pitting and the random-distributed pitting. We not only discuss the relation between the axial length of regular pitting and wave length of the T(0,1) mode, but also the reflected singal of four random pittings. The experiments were performed on 3 inch carbon steel pipe for measuring the reflected signals from different pittings with different frequencies.
The results of the simulation, indicate that the wave was easily scattered by pitting because the shape of geometry. It is the reason of reducing the amplitude of reflected signals. To receive a dominate signal reflected from pitting, the excitation with higher frequency was choosen within the frequency range of interest. The experimental results indicate that the signals would be too weak to be detected by guided waves when the estimated cross sectional loss of the pitting is less than 2 percent. However, the results after wavelet transform showed the feasibility of improving the abilities of detecting minor pitting. In the case of regular pitting, the maximu value of the reflected signal appeared when the axial length of the pitting equals to the 66 % of the wavelength. It is because the constructive interference. The mode conversion phenomena is another behavior of the reflected signal cased by the non-axissymetric geometry of the pitting. As for the random pitting, The reflected echo shows different behavior with the regular pitting. The amplitude of the signal is bigger with lower frequency we use. The different level of random pitting on the pipe were also identified successfully by wavelet transform. Understanding the phenomena of interaction between the guided wave and the pitting is helpful to the guided wave inspection.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0101110-230725
Date01 January 2010
CreatorsYang, Jia-wei
ContributorsYi-Cheng Huang, Shao-Yi Hsia, Shiuh-Kuang Yang, SYUE-JIAN Wu
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0101110-230725
Rightsnot_available, Copyright information available at source archive

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