PREDICTING SPOT WELD BUTTON AREA WITH AN ULTRASONIC PHASED ARRAY

Two-dimensional (2D) phased arrays have the potential to significantly change the way in which engineering components in safety critical industries are inspected. In addition to enabling a three-dimensional (3D) volume of a component to be inspected from a single location, they could also be used in a C-scan configuration. The latter would enable any point in a component to be interrogated over a range of solid angles, allowing more accurate defect characterization and sizing. This paper describes the simulation and evaluation of grid, cross and circular 2D phased array element configurations. The aim of the cross and circle configurations is to increase the effective aperture for a given number of elements. Due to the multitude of possible array element configurations a model, based on Huygens’ principle, has been developed to allow analysis and comparison of candidate array designs. In addition to the element configuration, key issues such as element size, spacing, and frequency are discussed and quantitatively compared using the volume of the 3D point spread function (PSF) as a measurand. The results of this modeling indicate that, for a given number of elements, a circular array performs best and that the element spacing should be less than half a wavelength to avoid grating lobes. A prototype circular array has been built and initial results are presented. These show that a flat bottomed hole, half a wavelength in diameter, can be imaged. Furthermore, it is shown that the volume of the 3D reflection obtained experimentally from the end of the hole compares well with the volume of the 3D PSF predicted for the array at that point.

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Narrowband ultrasonic phased array control using a photonic beamformer

Ultrasonics ◽

10.1016/0041-624x(96)00002-9 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 34 (1) ◽

pp. 9-18 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Nabeel A. Riza

Keyword(s):

Phased Array ◽

Ultrasonic Phased Array

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Application of Visual Beam Ultrasonic Phased Array in Inspection of Weld in Tubular Node

Volume 7: Operations, Applications and Components ◽

10.1115/pvp2015-45359 ◽

2015 ◽

Author(s):

Shaojun Wang ◽

Xiaoying Tang ◽

Houde Yu ◽

Yaozhou Qian ◽

Jun Cheng ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Welded Joints ◽

Phased Array ◽

Sound Beam ◽

Ultrasonic Sound ◽

Array Technology ◽

Coverage Model ◽

Ultrasonic Phased Array ◽

Arbitrary Section ◽

Tubular Joint ◽

Low Efficiency

Responding to complexity and particularity welding on the geometry of TKY tubular node, this paper constructs mathematical model of tubular joint weld of arbitrary section by simplifying the geometry structure, and draws welded joints and ultrasonic sound beam lines based on the actual specifications in order to solve the problems of low efficiency, positioning difficulty, missing inspection and etc. The computeraided simulation technology can realize the visualization in the beam coverage model of welded joints, which can commendably guide the design of ultrasonic phased array inspection and overcome the blindness of the instrument detection parameters, thus improving the effectiveness and pertinence of the actual detection. Study shows that it is beneficial to enhance the effectiveness of the detection tubular joint weld by employment of Visual beam and ultrasonic phased array technology.

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