Bertrand Chassignole

Modelling the grain orientation of austenitic stainless steel multipass welds to improve ultrasonic assessment of structural integrity

Knowledge of the grain orientation quantifies the material anisotropy which helps to ensure the good ultrasonic testing of welded assemblies and the assessment of their mechanical integrity. The model described here concerns the weld solidification of 316L stainless steel. The solidification of multipass welds made with a shielded electrode raises many unsolved modelling questions as it involves heat and fluid flow modelling in addition to solute redistribution models. To overcome these difficulties we have developed the MINA model to predict the resulting grain orientations without using a complete solidification model. This model relies upon a phenomenological description of grain orientations from macrograph analysis. One important advance of this model is to include data reporting in the welding notebook that ensures the generality of the model. This model allows us to accurately simulate the ultrasonic testing of welded components and to propose a new tool to associate welding design with the ultrasonic assessment of structural integrity.

Measurement of ultrasonic scattering attenuation in austenitic stainless steel welds: realistic input data for NDT numerical modeling.

Multipass welds made of 316L stainless steel are specific welds of the primary circuit of pressurized water reactors in nuclear power plants. Because of their strong heterogeneous and anisotropic nature due to grain growth during solidification, ultrasonic waves may be greatly deviated, split and attenuated. Thus, ultrasonic assessment of the structural integrity of such welds is quite complicated. Numerical codes exist that simulate ultrasonic propagation through such structures, but they require precise and realistic input data, as attenuation coefficients. This paper presents rigorous measurements of attenuation in austenitic weld as a function of grain orientation. In fact attenuation is here mainly caused by grain scattering. Measurements are based on the decomposition of experimental beams into plane-wave angular spectra and on the modeling of the ultrasonic propagation through the material. For this, the transmission coefficients are calculated for any incident plane wave on an anisotropic plate. Two different hypotheses on the welded material are tested: first it is considered as monoclinic, and then as triclinic. Results are analyzed, and validated through comparison to theoretical predictions of related literature. They underline the great importance of well-describing the anisotropic structure of austenitic welds for UT modeling issues.

RELATION BETWEEN ULTRASONIC BACKSCATTERING AND MICROSTRUCTURE FOR POLYCRYSTALLINE MATERIALS

Within the framework of the maintenance of its nuclear power stations, EDF uses ultrasonic inspections to make sure of the lack of defects. But in some cases, the structure of polycrystalline materials can produce the scattering of the ultrasonic wave which results in an important attenuation of the signal and the appearance of structural noise. Industrial inspections on various components demonstrated the importance of these physical phenomena which can lead to decrease the performances of the ultrasonic inspections. In a first approach, the polycrystalline material studied is the Inconel 600@ alloy, which has an isotropic and homogeneous microstructure. Some mock‐ups with different grain sizes, were experimentally characterized to measure the ultrasonic attenuation and the structural noise. The measurements show the influence of the mean grain size on the values of attenuation and noise. At last, a 2D finite element modeling at a microstructural scale using ATHENA software, gives first coherent results.

DETERMINATION OF THE ORDER OF PASSES OF AN AUSTENITIC WELD BY OPTIMIZATION OF AN INVERSION PROCESS OF ULTRASOUND DATA

Multipass welds made in austenitic stainless steel, in the primary circuit of nuclear power plants with pressurized water reactors, are characterized by an anisotropic and heterogeneous structure that disturbs the ultrasonic propagation and challenge the ultrasonic non‐destructive testing. The simulation in this type of structure is now possible thanks to the MINA code which allows the grain orientation modeling taking into account the welding process, and the ATHENA code to exactly simulate the ultrasonic propagation. We propose studying the case where the order of the passes is unknown to estimate the possibility of reconstructing this important parameter by ultrasound measures. The first results are presented.

Study of Ultrasonic Characterization And Propagation In Austenitic Welds: The MOSAICS Project

Regulatory requirements enforce a volumetric inspection of welded components of nuclear equipments. However, the multi-pass austenitic welds are characterized by anisotropic and heterogeneous structures which lead to numerous disturbances of the ultrasonic beam. The MOSAICS project supported by the ANR (French National Research Agency) aims at matching various approaches to improve the prediction of the ultrasonic testing in those welds. The first stage consists in characterizing the weld structure (determination of the columnar grain orientation and measurements of elastic constants and attenuation coefficients). The techniques of characterization provide input data for the modeling codes developed in another task of the project. For example, a 3D version of the finite elements code ATHENA is developed by EDF R&D to take into account anisotropic texture in any direction. Semi-analytical models included in CIVA software are also improved to better predict the ultrasonic propagation in highly anisotropic and heterogeneous structures. The last stage deals with modeling codes validation based on experimental inspections on representative mock-ups containing calibrated defects. The objective of this paper is to give an overview of the MOSAICS project and to present specific results illustrating the various tasks.