Acoustic emission monitoring for inspection of seam-welded hot reheat piping in fossil power plants
نویسندگان
چکیده
Although failure of the seam weld on reheat steam piping has been an infrequent occurrence, such failure is still a major safety concern for fossil plant operations. EPRI has provided guidelines for a piping management program based on periodic inspection. More recently, EPRI has also sponsored research to develop inspection techniques to both improve the quality and reduce the cost of piping inspections. Foremost in this research has been the use of acoustic emission (AE) techniques to detect crack damage in seam welds. AE has the substantial cost advantages of both allowing inspection without full removal of the thermal insulation on the reheat piping and making short re-inspection intervals practical. This paper reviews the EPRI guidelines for performing an AE inspection on seam-welded hot reheat piping.
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