Ryoichi Urayama

Application of EMAT/EC dual probe to monitoring of wall thinning in high temperature environment

Eddy current testing (ECT) and ultrasonic testing (UT) have been widely used for the non-destructive testing of metal structures. ECT has a high capability of sizing surface breaking cracks and UT is suitable for sizing sub-surface breaking cracks in thick-wall structures. Based on this background, the authors have proposed a novel dual probe with simple structure combining an electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) and Eddy current probe. The performance of the probe was verifi ed at room temperature. However, the operating temperature of boiling-water nuclear reactors is 300 degrees C. In this paper, the above dual probe is applied to monitoring of piping wall thinning in a high temperature environment. For this purpose, the structure and components of the probe are discussed so that the present probe should withstand 300 degrees C. Finally, the basic performance of the probe at high temperatures is investigated through an experiment using an electric furnace.

Study of a methodology of identifying important research problems by the PIRT process

In this paper, we propose a new methodology of identifying important research problems to be solved to improve the performance of some specific scientific technologies by the phenomena identification and ranking table (PIRT) process which has been used as a methodology for demonstrating the validity of the best estimate simulation codes in US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) licensing of nuclear power plants. The new methodology makes it possible to identify important factors affecting the performance of the technologies from the viewpoint of the figure of merit and problems associated with them while it keeps the fundamental concepts of the original PIRT process. Also in this paper, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the new methodology by applying it to a task of extracting research problems for improving an inspection accuracy of ultrasonic testing or eddy current testing in the inspection of objects having cracks due to fatigue or stress corrosion cracking.

B202 Application of EMAT/EC Dual Probe to Monitoring of Wall Thinning in High Temperature Environment

Eddy current testing (ECT) and ultrasonic testing (UT) have been widely used for the non-destructive testing of metal structures. ECT has a high capability of sizing surface breaking cracks and UT is suitable for sizing sub-surface breaking cracks in thick-wall structures. Based on this background, the authors have proposed a novel dual probe with simple structure combining an electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) and Eddy current probe. The performance of the probe was verifi ed at room temperature. However, the operating temperature of boiling-water nuclear reactors is 300 degrees C. In this paper, the above dual probe is applied to monitoring of piping wall thinning in a high temperature environment. For this purpose, the structure and components of the probe are discussed so that the present probe should withstand 300 degrees C. Finally, the basic performance of the probe at high temperatures is investigated through an experiment using an electric furnace.