Development of data acquisition and analysis system for an automated ultrasonic testing of reactor pressure vessel welds

Manual ultrasonic testing equipment is small and portable and possesses most of the basic functions, but it neither includes data analysis function nor large data storage media. Thus, it may result in human errors in interpreting UT signals. Automated ultrasonic testing equipment, on the other hand, enables one to analyze on-line/off-line data and has large data storage media. However, it is bulky and needs driving mechanism which manipulates UT transducers. In order to examine reactor pressure vessel welds, huge amount of ultrasonic data from multi-channels should be able to be on-line processed. In addition, ultrasonic transducer scanning device which is accurate and reliable should be remotely controlled, because working place is high radiation area. In this paper, introduced is automated ultrasonic data acquisition and analysis system which has recently been developed at KAITEC for the UT of the nuclear pressure vessel welds.