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Zetec Obtains Appendix VIII Qualification of a Procedure for Encoded Manually Driven Phased Array UT Examination on Dissimilar Metal Piping Welds
In December 2005, Zetec obtained a PDI qualification for its "Procedure for Encoded,
Manually Driven Phased Array UT Examination on Dissimilar Metal Piping Welds" (ASME Code section XI, Appendix VIII, Supplement 10).
The qualified scope covers detection, length sizing and through-wall sizing of circumferential and axial
cracks in dissimilar metal piping welds from the outside surface, for NPS diameters 1.5 inches and up,
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and for wall thicknesses from 0.210 to 6.50 inches (5.3 to 165.1 mm). The procedure is applicable for dissimilar metal welds in both PWR and BWR nuclear plants.
This procedure is the first one qualified for Supplement 10 to use phased array UT technology. Developed in collaboration with EPRI, it is commercially available to Zetec customers through a License Agreement.
In 2004, Zetec already qualified a procedure and equipment to inspect homogeneous austenitic and ferritic piping welds (ASME Code section XI, Appendix VIII, Supplements 2 and 3). The new procedure for dissimilar metal welds uses the same phased array acquisition system, the OmniScan PA (trademark of Olympus NDT), a light weight (< 4 kg), battery operated unit. Again, the Zetec Manual Pipe Scanner was used for the encoded scanning. This scanner is manually driven, lightweight (< 3 kg), and is adaptable to pipe diameters ranging from 4 to 36 inches. Installation is fast and requires no tools. The scanner has dual-axis position encoding that supports raster scanning sequences.
Dedicated dual 2-D matrix array probes were developed and fabricated to inspect all weld configurations with good detection capability and sizing accuracy. Generation of the focal laws for the 2-D matrix probes and data analysis were both performed with the new Zetec UltraVision 1.0 software.
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