Quality assurance of multipass welds is an important aspect to ensure their structural integrity and safe operation. However, common practice is to perform weld inspection after all layers are deposited. This may lead to expensive and tedious reworks, increased lead times, diminished throughputs and worsened scrappage. However, detection of weld discontinuities at the point of manufacture allows an opportunity to rectify them at an earlier stage. This will reduce manufacturing costs, wastage, and product cycle time significantly. Therefore, a high-temperature phased array ultrasound roller-probe is proposed for automated in-process inspection of multipass welds. In contrast to traditional roller-probes, the one presented here can tolerate test material temperatures up to 350 ^0^C and is able to perform angled weld inspection using 55^0^ shear waves into the material. The roller probe demonstrated high temperature inspection capabilities by successfully detecting artificial defects embedded into a weld immediately after the deposition.

A weld is typically inspected several days after being manufactured, and therefore any defect such as lack of fusion, porosity, inclusion and cracks that may have occurred in the early deposition stages are now buried and undetected until post-weld inspection is undertaken. Such weld defects pose numerous business challenges including expensive and cumbersome rework, decreased throughput and increased wastage. Therefore, the concept of automated in-process inspection is being researched to merge both manufacture and inspection of welds into one single process that allows detection and opportunity to rectify non-conformities with a weld at an earlier stage. Hence, this provides the potential to gain significant time savings, cost benefits and reduced post process reworks and wastage. Further, this method generates additional benefits linked to automation in general. For example, improved health safety, better utilization of human resources, better consistency, enhanced repeatability, and speed.


Automated In-Process Phased Array Ultrasonic Inspection of Multipass Welds

No proceedings papers in 2020. Video only.

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