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Proceedings of the ASME 2014 Pressure Vessels & Piping Conference

PVP2014
July 20-24, 2014, Anaheim, California, USA

PVP2014-28243
Creeping Wave Testing Technology Application On
In-service Pressure Pipe
Yubao Chen
Guangdong Institute of Special Equipment Inspection,
Huangpudadaozhong, Guangzhou 510655
Guangdong, China.
Tel: 86-20 8562 6210
Email: chenyubao@tsinghua.org.cn

ABSTRACT

in second solid, which the waves propagate in close to the


longitudinal wave velocity beneath the medium surface .In order
to distinguish its from compressional and shear wave, the wave
is called a longitudinal creeping wave, creeping wave for
short[1].
The creeping wave is developed by ultrasonic wave
waveform changes propagating to the two different interface .
According to the propagation characteristics of ultrasonic wave,
when the ultrasonic propagates from one medium to another
medium interface by oblique incident , reflection and refraction
wave appear [2]. When Ultrasonic longitudinal wave propagates
from lower velocity medium to higher velosity medium , the
refractive angle will increases with incident angle increasing.
Until incident angle increases to
the first critical
angle ,longitudinal wave refraction angle in second media equals
to 90 degrees and the creeping wave will be excited in the
second medium. The creeping wave generation and
characteristics of acoustic field are as shown in figure 1[4,6].

For many in-service pressure pipe welds with thinner


thickness (less than 10mm), the conventional pulse echo testing
technique is difficultly used for its less thickness and the
radiographic testing is not conveniently performed because of
the pipe position limitation. But, the creeping wave(CW)
technology can play an important role in these pipe welds
inspection because of its special characteristics. In the paper, the
generation and attenuation feature of CW are detailed and the
probe configuration and comparative block of CW testing are
discussed. Finally, successful application of CW in pipe welds is
demonstrated.
FOREWORD
Many pressure pipeline are distributed in petrochemical
plant. Their diameters are generally larger than 38mm and
thickness are generally between 4-15mm.For welding seam with
thickness less than 10mm, it is difficult to use the conventional
UT detection and, X-ray radiography is inconvenient because
of their location limit. However, the creeping wave testing
technology can better achieve the detection objective and ensure
the safe operation of pipelines.
1. THE CREEPING WAVE TECHNIQUE

(a)

1.1 Generation of Creeping Wave


When the longitudinal wave inclines to the solid interface at
first critical angle, a kind of inhomogeneous wave will appear

(b)

FIG.1 GENERATION AND ACOUSTIC FIELD OF CW

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In the Figure 1 (a) , a is first critical angle, b is shear wave


refraction angle and is angle of main creeping wave beam
about 76 degrees . The amplitude distribution of creeping wave
particle displacement away entry point 150mm with 1.8 MHz
frequency and 18mm crystal size is shown in Figure 1 (b) .
It can be observed from Figure 1 that the creeping wave
exists not only in the surface but also in the subsurface and
maximum energy direction is in the subsurface with an angle
about 14 degrees to the surface and the amplitude is higher
about 20dB[2] than surfaces .Therefore, It is applicable for the
detection in the surface and subsurface and the subsurface has
the higher sensitivity. In addition, because the creeping wave has
larger propagation speed and wavelength, so the surface
scattering is relatively weak and the surface roughness is not
sensitive to its.

1.3 CW Probe
According to the number of wafers, creeping wave probe is
divided into single and double crystal probe[3]. The double
crystal is one-transmitting-and-the-other-receiving creeping
wave probe. Because of better performance against electrical
interference, the bimorph creeping wave probe has been widely
applied. This creeping wave probe can be divided into two
structures. One is series connection of two crystals and the other
is parallel connection of two crystals. The parallel probe is
widely used in the inspection [7].
The probe we used is parallel type produced by American
AIS company. Its parameter follows as: crystal size:13 8mm,
frequency: 5MHz.
1.4 Comparative Block
In order to confirm the testing ability of creeping wave, a
comparative block was specially designed, as shown in figure 4.
The parameter follows as: thickness: 30mm, material: carbon
steel, reflector: through hole with diameter 2mm.

1.2 Attenuation of Creeping Wave


The echo amplitude in different acoustic distance were
measured by two same model probe(one is emitter, other is
receiver) placed in the way shown in Figure 2 (a) . The
measuring result is shown in Figure 2 (b) , which is fitting with

L- n ( n>1) attenuation law [5].

FIG.4 SPECIAL BLOCK OFCW

(a)

The upper four holes above block can be clearly detected by


the creeping wave and was shown in fig 5.

(b)

FIG.2 ATTENUATION MEASUREMENT OF CW

The key reason of creeping wave attenuation is that echo


amplitude continuously decreased due to longitudinal wave
continuously changing to shear wave along the propagation.
The effectively testing distance depends on the degree of
waveform change and shear wave energy loss in the solid. Due
to the rapid attenuation of energy, the most sensitive point, that
is, so-called focus is on the the probe front with only 20mm
distance and the maximum acoustic distance is about 45 mm[5].
Actual measurement result shown on fig.3 appears that A
probes focus distance is 18mm and effective acoustic path is
43mm.

FIG.5 INSPECTION OF REFERENCE BLOCK

2. FIELD APPLICATION
In a site inspection, the total 22 welds in pipes with the
specifications of the 15910 and1338 were detected using
creeping wave technique and no defects is found. In order to
verify the testing reliability, the X ray radiography was
conducted on the 6 welds, the detection results are consistent
completely.
3. CONCLUSION
To sum up, the following conclusions can be drawn:

FIG.3 ACTUAL ATTENUATION OF CW PROBE

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(1) creeping wave technique can be reliably used to detect the


imperfection on the surface or in the subsurface of pipe line. In
some cases, it is very favorable , such as in solving the surface
dead area of TOFD technique.
(2) the creeping wave is not sensitive to the surface roughness,
so it can be used to detect the rough surface.
(3) the creeping wave attenuation is relatively large, so the
detection distance should not be too large, generally about
50mm.

4.

5.

6.
REFERENCES
1.
2.
3.

Reichel, D. R., 2006, The Science and Applications of


Acoustics, Springer, p.620,New York.
D. Bouche, et al, 2000,Creeping and Generalized Creeping
Wave, University of St. Petersburg, Russia.
S. Sajauskas, et al, 2010, Propagation Properties of
Longitudinal Surface Acoustic Wave(Creeping Waves)on

7.

the
Cylindrical
Convex
Surface,
Journal
of
Ultrasonic,65(4),pp.35-36,Kaunas, Lithuania.
Kaisheng Zheng, Yucheng Chen and Yingqiu Peng,2000,
"The Development and Application of Single Crystal
Creeping Wave Probe with Line-focusing", 15th World
Conference on Nondestructive Testing, Roma, Italy .
Michele Caiboni, Michele Sangirardi, 2008, "Performance
of UT Creeping Wavs in Crack Sizing",17th World
Conference on Nondestructive Testing, Shanghai .
Deliang Lian and Tianyang Wei,2005, Study on the Spread
Angle of the Sound Field of Ultrasonic Creeping Wave
Probe, Journal of Nondestructive Testing, 27(9),pp.479480,Shanghai.
Guofeng Zhang, Zhi Yan, et al, 2010,Application of Creep
Wave Inspection Technology, Journal of Nondestructive
Testing, 32(1),pp.28-29,Shanghai.

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