발전소 열교환기 헤더와 튜브의 부분 용입형 용접부 초음파 자동검사시스템 개발

A power plant’s heat exchangers work under poor conditions, such as high temperature, high pressure, corrosion, mechanical stress and vibration. Especially, partial joint-weld of heat exchanger’s header to stub-tube is the place where incomplete penetration flaws can easily occur. But, it is hard to evaluate the safety of the structure by conventional nondestructive testing techniques. So it is necessary to test integrity of the weld inside and to develop testing technique and equipment that can detect the flaws at the weld point in order to enhance reliability of the test result. In this study, we developed a suitable automated ultrasonic testing system that can inspect the partial joint-weld of header to stub-tube of power plant. Finally, we showed the efficiency of the automated ultrasonic-testing-system from the application.