Friction stir welding and tungsten inert gas welding techniques were employed to weld armor grade aluminum alloy to investigate the effect of welding processes on tensile behavior of weld joints. Tensile tests, Vicker microhardness tests and optical microscopy were performed on developed weld joints and base metal. Welding process influenced tensile behavior and microstructure of weld joints. F...

This paper describes research towards the development of a robotic system for the automated inspection of steel plates. Such plates are inspected extensively during manufacture and fabrication. This inspection is often carried out manually in hazardous environments by skilled personnel. Such difficult conditions may reduce the operating ability of technicians, leading to poor performance and lo...

Ultrasonic phased arrays offer significant advantages over radiography for pipeline weld inspections: they have higher detection rates for critical planar defects (i.e. cracks and lack of fusion), better defined interpretation, vertical sizing capability for Engineering Critical Assessment, no safety hazards, no licensing issues, no chemical wastes, and no requirement to evacuate the area. Phas...

In this paper, we present two feature extraction techniques for the classification of ultrasonic NDE signals acquired from weld inspection regions of boiling water reactor piping of nuclear power plants. The classification system consists of a pre-processing block that extracts features from the incoming patterns, and of an artificial neural network that assigns the computed features to a parti...

A new advanced system for Ultrasonic Peening (UP) of materials, details and welded elements was developed recently. The UP produces a number of beneficial effects in metals and alloys. Foremost among these is increasing the resistance of materials to surface-related failures, such as fatigue, fretting fatigue and stress corrosion cracking. The beneficial effect is achieved mainly by relieving o...

Managing pipe damaged by Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) has been a formidable challenge to the pipeline industry. The development of a practical solution for the measurement and evaluation of SCC has been marred by the complexity of crack shapes, their distribution within a crack colony, and the lack of non-destructive technology capable of reliably measuring the crack depths. Laser ultrasonic...

Pulse-echo ultrasonic signal is used to detect weld defects with high probability. However, utilizing echo signal for defects classification is another issue that has attracted attention of many researchers who have devised algorithms and tested them against their own databases. In this paper, a study is conducted to score the performance of various algorithms against a single echo signal datab...

Enhancement in fatigue performance of welded joints by Ultrasonic Impact Treatment (UIT) was evaluated with large-scale rolled beam and built-up specimens having yield strength of 345 to 760 MPa. Eighteen rolled-beam specimens having welded details at cover plates and transverse stiffeners and eight built-up specimens having only transverse stiffener details were fatigue tested after treating t...

Welded constructions play a vital role in power plant components. Power industry utilization of radiography for integrity of welds is a common practice in the vessel manufacturing industry. Recent developments in the field of ultrasonic utilize Time of Flight Diffraction Technique (ToFD) for evaluation of welds with respect to Engineering Critical Assessment approach for evaluation of welds. Re...

This paper presents a detailed experimental assessment of the effect of the thickness of flat energy directors (ED) on heat generation at the interface during ultrasonic welding. Power and displacement data showed clear differences caused by the change of thickness, related to heat concentration at the weld line during the process. The extent of the heat-affected zone was assessed by welding sp...