Eddy Current Test for Detection of Foreign Material using Rotating Probe

There are several elements that affect on the integrity of steam generator tubes. One of the elements is loose parts located on outside of the tubes. It causes erosion which is possible to lead fatal defect like crack on the outside surface of the tubes. In this study, artificial loose parts on Inconel 690 tube are demonstrated and eddy current testing data of the region is acquired using rotating probe. Ferromagnetic and nonmagnetic foreign materials were used to demonstrate artificial loose parts. Eddy current channel of 100 KHz frequency shows definite signals of those foreign materials but stainless steel was not clearly detected. This result can be explained based on the electrical conductivity of the materials and it can be confirmed with lissajous window and C-scan. In addition, no indication was detected when the distance of the gap between the foreign materials and the tube is increased to more than 3 mm under this test condition. Based on these experimental inspections, we were able to find suitable methods for analyzing the signals obtained under various conditions that could occur when conducting steam generator eddy current test in NPP.

Effects of Probe Support on the Stall Characteristics of a Low-Speed Axial Compressor

In order to investigate the effects of probe support on the stall characteristics of micro compressors, an experiment was carried out on a large-scale low-speed research compressor according to the principle of geometric similarity. A cylindrical probe support intruding to 50% blade span was mounted at 50% chord upstream from the rotor blade leading edge. The static pressure rise characteristic of the compressor is measured, with and without the probe support respectively. The dynamic compressor behavior from pre-stall to full stall was also measured. The results indicate that the stability margin of the compressor is lowered after installing the probe support. The stall inception is aroused by modal wave disturbances. The disturbances developed into two stall cells smoothly before installing the probe support, while the disturbances first developed into a single stall cell then splitting into two stall cells after installing the probe support. The presence of probe support lowers the initial intensity of the rotating stall of the compressor, while it doesn't alter the intensity of the rotation stall after the compressor enters into full stall.

Information Entropy of Angular Spectrum for Quantitatively Evaluating Eddy Current Distribution Varying in Time Domain

Eddy current (EC) distribution induced by EC sensors determines the interaction between the defectin the testing specimen and the EC, so quantitatively evaluating EC distribution is crucial to the design of ECsensors. In this study, two indices based on the information entropy are proposed to evaluate the EC energyallocated in different directions. The EC vectors induced by a rotational field EC sensor varying in the timedomain are evaluated by the proposed methods. Then, the evaluating results are analyzed by the principle ofEC testing. It can be concluded that the two indices can effectively quantitatively evaluate the EC distributionsvarying in the time domain and are used to optimize the parameters of the rotational EC sensors.