Quantitative evaluation of ultrasonic wave propagation in inhomogeneous anisotropic austenitic welds using 3D ray tracing method. Numerical and experimental validation

Austenitic welds and dissimilar welds are extensively used in primary circuit pipes and pressure vessels in nuclear power plants, chemical industries and fossil fuelled power plants because of their high fracture toughness, resistance to corrosion and creep at elevated temperatures. However, cracks may initiate in these weld materials during fabrication process or stress operations in service. Thus, it is very important to evaluate the structural integrity of these materials using highly reliable non-destructive testing (NDT) methods. Ultrasonic non-destructive inspection of austenitic welds and dissimilar weld components is complicated because of anisotropic columnar grain structure leading to beam splitting and beam deflection. Simulation tools play an important role in developing advanced reliable ultrasonic testing (UT) techniques and optimizing experimental parameters for inspection of austenitic welds and dissimilar weld components. The main aim of the thesis is to develop a 3D ray tracing model for quantitative evaluation of ultrasonic wave propagation in an inhomogeneous anisotropic austenitic weld material. Inhomogenity in the anisotropic weld material is represented by discretizing into several homogeneous layers. According to ray tracing model, ultrasonic ray paths are traced during its energy propagation through various discretized layers of the material and at each interface the problem of reflection and transmission is solved. The influence of anisotropy on ultrasonic reflection and transmission behaviour in an anisotropic austenitic weld material are quantitatively analyzed in three dimensions. The ultrasonic beam directivity in columnar grained austenitic steel material is determined three dimensionally using Lamb's reciprocity theorem. The developed ray tracing model evaluates the transducer excited ultrasonic fields accurately by taking into account the directivity of the transducer, divergence of the ray bundle, density of rays and phase relations as well as transmission coefficients. The ray tracing model is able to determine the ultrasonic wave fields generated by a point source as well as finite dimension array transducers. The influence of inhomogenity on ultrasonic ray propagation and its interaction with defects in inhomogeneous austenitic welds is presented. The applications of 3D ray tracing model for optimizing experimental parameters during the ultrasonic non-destructive testing of transversal cracks in austenitic welds are presented. An ultrasonic C-scan image in homogeneous and multi-layered anisotropic austenitic steel materials is quantitatively evaluated using a novel 3D ray tracing method. The influence of the columnar grain orientation and the layback orientation on an ultrasonic C-scan image is presented. The ray tracing model results are validated first time quantitatively with the results obtained from 2D Elastodynamic Finite Integration Technique (EFIT) on several important configurations such as anisotropic and homogeneous austenitic steel material, layered austenitic steel and inhomogeneous weld materials which are generally occurring in the ultrasonic NDT of anisotropic materials. Quantitatively, a deviation of 8.6% was observed in the point source generated ultrasonic fields whereas in the case of array source ultrasound fields a deviation of 10.2% was observed. The predicted ultrasonic fields for array transducers in an inhomogeneous austenitic weld material with spatially varying columnar grain orientation using ray tracing method are validated against the results of a commercially available NDT simulation tool (CIVA). The result shows that an accuracy of 89.5% was achieved in the presented ray tracing model in this thesis. Experiments have been conducted on 32 mm thick inhomogeneous austenitic weld material, 62 mm thick austenitic clad material and quantitatively measured the ultrasound beam distortion and field profiles using electrodynamical probes. The inhomogenity in the weld material is modeled based on the Ogilvy's empirical relation. The weld parameters are optimized in the empirical relation such a way that to match with the macrograph of the real life austenitic weld specimen. The ultrasound beam propagation and field profiles are accurately computed using ray tracing model. The simulated ultrasound field profiles using ray tracing model along the back wall of an austenitic weld component and clad material are compared quantitatively with the experimental results. It turned out that the deviation between simulation and experiments was about 5.2% in the isotropic austenitic material, 16.5% in the austenitic weld material and 5.46% in the austenitic clad material. Finally, the reasons for differences between simulation and experimental results are explored.